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Who knows, those poems you have stashed away in a drawer might just be a winning pamphlet...

Our 2025 Poetry Pamphlet Competition closes on ✨ 8 December ✨For all the details and how to enter: mslexia.co.uk/competitions...

9) One way of deciding on an order is to arrange the poems on the floor and allow them to circle around one another until they form little clusters, which can help you identify the glue that holds the collection together.

8) A collection is like origami, where the folds create an array of different shapes, that connect in different ways along their edges. And the meanings unfold into one another, as the reader moves through the collection.

7) People often say a pamphlet should have a theme. I'm happy to read 20 unrelated poems, provided they convey your voice and preoccupations. Sometimes a theme can be too one-tracked. It’s good to allow your imagination to range a little further...to lean in towards your theme more tangentially.

6) I’m also looking for an authentic voice, which is achieved by saying something that no-one else would say, in a way that is unmistakably you, as true as the sound of a crystal glass singing when you slide your finger round the rim.

5) Pay attention to your poem titles. It’s good to see a title as a way into the poem, or as expressing a slightly different aspect of the same idea.

4) It’s that attention to the words that I am looking for. We all use the same words, but a good poet puts them in an order that expresses exactly what they mean.

3) I love it when I get a shock of recognition, when I feel, 'That was exactly what I wanted to say but never found the right words! – and this poet has said it at last.'

2) Tell me: 'This is what I know about this thing.' If you want to tackle a big topic, try to make it your own by writing from your lived experience.

1) My most important advice is: don’t allow yourself to be ruled by rules. You can write about anything in the world. That’s what poetry does. It allows you to write about unspeakable things.

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