Do poems have to rhyme?

No. Poems don’t have to rhyme. But if that’s the case then why do so many people think they do? And does that mean rhyming poems are looked down upon? What does a rhyme bring to a poem, anyway?

Fair questions all of them and ones which, as the home of the National Poetry Library and host of many poets, we’re in a better place than most to answer. So we spoke to two poets to do exactly that.

Lorraine Mariner is Deputy Librarian at the National Poetry Library here at the Southbank Centre, and a hugely talented poet in her own right, with her 2009 collection Furniture shortlisted for the Forward Prize for best First Collection and the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize. And poet Lily Blacksell – who joins us to host An Evening with Rough Trade Books this Friday – runs the London poetry and music night Canon Fodder, and earlier this year published her first collection Life Immediately. So, let’s get straight to it…

Why do so many people think that poems have to rhyme?

The first cut is the deepest. Something which it would seem is as true with poetry as it is with heartbreak, because we can largely attribute this expectation for poems to rhyme to the first poetry we encounter, the poetry we’re introduced to as children. ‘When it comes to sharing poetry with children you see the children respond to rhyme and rhythm,’ says Mariner, ‘It’s no accident that one of the finest children’s poets Charles Causley was also a teacher, roadtesting his poems on the children in his class. He knew that traditional forms and strong rhymes captured their attention and imagination.’

Blacksell agrees, but adds that this assumption also comes down to ‘the poetry we encounter on greeting cards, at weddings and funerals and, in one of my favourite poetic forms of all, limericks, which are among the first poems many of us come across. I know a measly few poems off by heart – largely due to a total lack of effort on my part – but I do have at least ten limericks at my fingertips. One I’m currently obsessed with goes:

There was a young man from Peru
whose limericks stopped at line two

There was a young man from Verdun’

What is the purpose of rhyme in a poem?

Ask any poet (if for some reason you don’t believe our two) or indeed any of the librarians at our National Poetry Library and they’ll tell you that poems don’t have to rhyme. So, with that in mind, why use rhyme in poetry at all? What does rhyming give a poem? ‘Rhythm and rocking,’ replies Blacksell, but also adds the caveat that this ‘can risk becoming a lulling if the rhymes are too predictable.’ However, ‘there is great punchline potential in rhyming, particularly if you’re able to swerve away from someone’s expectations. I think some of my favourite rhymes are ghosts’.

For Mariner rhyme can bring ‘clarity, surprise, fun and memorability’ to a poem. ‘But it can also bring predictability and melancholy, it’s very versatile.’ She add, ‘I love it when I read a poem and then go back over it and realise it actually rhymes or is following a set form, but the rhyme and form are doing their thing in the background and not intruding on the poem, it’s all just working together beautifully.’

‘Rhyming poems can be great in performance,’ Mariner adds, something she knows from first hand experience. ‘Rug Rhymes – the National Poetry Library’s rhyme time and song session for Under 5s – can be quite raucous and often we think the babies and toddlers might not want to listen to the rhyming picture book in the middle of these sessions. But whenever we begin to read and the rhymes start ringing out a hush descends.’

Are some subjects more suitable for rhyming poetry than others?

Given much of the expectation for poetry to rhyme comes from our childhood, does that then mean that rhyme is only really suitable for poetry that’s happy and light? Well no, not necessarily, as Mariner explains. ‘A rhyming form like a triolet was used by Thomas Hardy to explore loss and grief which I think shows that rhyme can be used for very dark subjects and doesn’t necessarily turn it into a joke.’

Blacksell concurs. ‘Stevie Smith is one of my favourite writers,’ she explains, ‘She’s often dismissed for her nursery rhyme-like poems, but many of them are deadly serious and laced with despair. I like the disguise that rhyme offers – dicing with being underestimated. Mark Waldron is definitely writing some of the best existential nursery rhymes in the business these days. So I suppose I’m saying all themes can be explored through rhyming poetry, but perhaps it’s best done inadvertently.’

Even poets who are writing for young readers are not averse to using rhyme to explore quite serious topics, as Mariner explains. ‘Children’s poet Sarah Ziman has a brilliant rhyming pantoum ‘Felicity’ in her collection Why Did My Brain Make Me Say It about a friend moving away. Its repeated lines and rhyme scheme creates a sense of inevitability and recurring pain.’

Do poets prefer non-rhyming poems?

There’s a suggestion that rhyming poetry is a more simplified version of the craft; something which perhaps tallies with our experience of it coming, as Blacksell says, from greeting cards and limericks – there’s a reason Hallmark aren’t known for their use of epic freeverse. But does that mean that poets look down on poems that rhyme, and prefer their poems to be rhymeless? Well, no, not according to our poets. ‘I like both!’ exclaims Blacksell, ‘and contemporary poems which rhyme have a real novelty value as they’ve fallen out of fashion’.

When do poets use rhyme?

We’ve established that poems don’t have to rhyme, and we also know that no subject matter is really off-limits for a rhyming poem. So how do our own poets use rhyme and rhyming? Is it something they deploy often?

‘There’s a lot of rhyme in my poems, confirms Blacksell. ‘It’s seldom a conscious decision, more that I’m led by sound. My rhymes usually occur within lines, rather than at the end of them. They’re scattered throughout the poems, so you get the sing-song and call-back qualities, but a little more off kilter and, I hope, a little less predictable. I have a poem called ‘Ulysses’ which is, in part, about being seasick on the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, so the intermittent rhyming helps to give the impression of being stuck on the boat as it sways.’

As for Mariner, ‘I use internal rhymes a lot of the time in my poetry for adults, so words rhyming and half-rhyming within lines rather than at the ends of lines. But I feel I’m exercising different muscles when it comes to writing for children, where I try to use strict rhyme at the end of lines more often than not. Years ago I took poet Mimi Khalvati’s legendary Versification course with the Poetry School and bought myself a rhyming dictionary which I used a lot as I grappled with different forms and rhyme schemes. Since I’ve started taking writing children’s poetry more seriously I’ve dusted off the dictionary and have it to hand if I’m working on a children’s poem.’

Favourite rhymes?

We’ve already touched on the fact that rhymes can help with a poem’s memorability, so it would be remiss for us to end without asking Blacksell and Mariner for their favourite rhyme, or at least the one that’s stuck in their head the longest. 

‘There are so many song lyrics I could choose’, says Blacksell, ‘particularly anything by Aldous Harding. But I’ll go with this from ‘Bagpipe Music’ by Louis MacNeice:

It’s no go my honey love, it’s no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.

‘There’s a photo of Benjamin Zephaniah on my rhyming dictionary as he wrote the introduction,’ replies Mariner, ‘and we have a CD of his poems that we use with school visits so many of his rhymes are stuck in my head. But I particularly love the opening of his poem ‘Body Talk’:

Dere’s a Sonnet
Under me bonnet
Dere’s a Epic
In me ear,
Dere’s a Novel
In me navel
Dere’s a Classic
Here somewhere.