Go! 5 Ways to Improve Your Opening Line

Discover Andrew's advice on improving the opening line of your poem.

What’s so important about an opening line?

Will your first line run on from your title? Will it speak to or against your title? There is so much that can be achieved with the opening line of a poem. By the same token, though, if mishandled or dealt with lazily there is a lot that can be lost there too, not least the reader’s attention. So, in this guide, I’ve tried to summarise some key advice to you as someone who’s read lots of poetry, published a bit, and acted as a competition judge, too, and will be taking up that role again in the new year for The Poet’s Workshop Poetry Prize. 

1. No Time to Waste

Maybe you think that the last line of your 100 line poem is worth waiting for. Maybe you think the reader will give your poem all the time it deserves and read it at least twice, I mean what else have they got to do? I’m afraid to break it to you, but those kinds of readers are incredibly rare, plus why should anyone want to keep reading a poem that doesn’t invite them to stay or interest them with every line? So, what I’m trying to say here is simple: don’t waste any time and make sure your opening line is every bit, if not better than, your poem’s epiphany or punch line or whichever way you want to end it. Every line of your poem has got to be working hard to keep the reader going and surprising them, and the opening line, after your title, is such an important place to pull them into the world of your poem. Try this: once you’ve written your poem, leave it a couple of days, or if you can’t wait that long, make a cuppa and then come back to it. Now pretend to read the poem as if you are someone else who has never seen it before. Would the opening line make you want to read on? Would it hook you? Try to edit your poems in this detached way and soon you’ll be making decisions which, while they may seem ruthless, are actually vastly improving your poem. 

2. First Word/Phrase and Syntax

Now, I’m not saying you should never begin a poem with ‘The’, as I’ve done it many times, and will probably continue to do it, but if all of your poems begin with ‘The’ then you might want to think about the order of your first line, particularly if many of the following lines in your poem also begin with ‘The’. Not only does this look repetitive but it can sound repetitive too, and take the lustre off your writing. So, to resolve this (and let’s face it, lots about the editing process is problem solving), can you move words around to make them more interesting, to control the speed at which the reader will work through? You can do this by thinking about where you include your clause, for example. Can you swap the second half of your first line with its first half? 

3. Sensational or Simple?

There can be a fine line between ratcheting up your first line to really make the reader stop in their tracks and overdoing it with sensationalism for its own sake. And it’s worth bearing in mind that often the most arresting lines can be the simplest, piquing our intrigue and engaging us on a deeper level. I think of Don Paterson’s ‘I love all films that start with rain’ or Emily Dickinson’s ‘I heard a Fly buzz - when I died’. Robert Frost was such a master of the understated first line that to read them insolation doesn’t really do them justice in the context of the poems they find themselves in, e.g. ‘I’m going out to clean the pasture spring.’ So, whether you want to ratchet up your first line to be something dramatic, just remember that the context of the poem is important, and how the first line acts as a doorway into the poem as much as its own little showpiece. 

4. Image First

Whatever you choose to do in your opening line, the chances are that if it doesn't have an image in it, you’re already on the back foot. One of the elements that make poems machines for remembering themselves, in the words of Don Paterson (there he is again) is imagery. I’ve described it in this article as being like poem-fuel. Poems run on images so, maybe as a writing exercise you could try and incorporate an image into every line of a poem, and then write another poem where you actively avoid using imagery. Put them side by side and I’m confident that you’ll see the one with imagery wins out. 

5. Think Line Endings

Ask yourself about where and why you have chosen to end your first line. Is it because you’re setting up for a rhyme? Is it because you want to emphasise a certain image? Is it because you want to shock the reader or give them a jolt with an uneven or broken off sentence? If you are doing the latter be wary that this can sometimes work against you, though, and it can almost seem as if the poem is working against the reader. Whatever is the case, make sure you have given thought to how you end a line, and not simply because you felt like it. The reader doesn’t care for lazy line endings and can sniff them out very quickly. So, in essence, integrate line endings into the structure of your poem so as they stand out for the right reasons. 

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Andrew Jamison is a poet and teacher, and you can read more articles on his blog here or get a paid subscription, support his journey as a writer and access all previous and future posts here. You can also browse his poetry collections and buy signed, first editions of each of them here.