Saturday, August 29, 2026

What Are Acrostic Poems?

                                                        Photo by Aneta Pawlik on Unsplash

August is a month full of my family's birthdays. My Dad's and Daughter's Birthdays are 2 days apart. My sister in-law's is the day before my Dad's, And my brother in-law has the same day as my Dad's! I also have friends with August birthdays. 

But what am I talking about birthdays for when I should be talking about acrostic poems from the title of this blog? Well, acrostic poems happen to make great birthday presents. In fact, one was the greatest gift I ever got. It wasn't my birthday, just a random day, and a friend of mine in high-school said she had something for me after class. It was an acrostic poem of my name saying nice things about me. I write acrostic poems all the time, mainly because they are easy for me. So what is an acrostic poem?

                                                   Photo by Matthias Heyde on Unsplash

An acrostic poem is a poem that spells out a word going down. So when looked at, the first letter of each line of a poem spells out a word. Let's use Birthday as an example:

Bright

Inspiring

Ritual

That

Happens to

Dare the

Awesomeness of

Years

                                                        Photo by Angèle Kamp on Unsplash

For me, these types of poems are fairly easy to do, and do quickly. I actually once used this form of poetry to make money at a craft fair. I got some nice paper, and wrote out poems for people, charging a small amount (it was a dollar then, but over 15 years has passed and I would charge more now). I asked a person their name or a name of a person they wanted to make a gift for. Then I would ask about that person and what their likes were. Then I would write out that person's name and write a poem about them, and it's all thanks to my friend that gave me that poem in high school. I often think of a letter and see how many words I can come up with that letter. When I seriously want to write the words, I will write them down on a piece of paper. This can also help me when I have writer's block. It's fun for me. I hope it's fun for some of you too. At least I hope it's fun for you to read if you don't write!

Part of the reason I am telling you about acrostic poems is because "Season's of Sensation" will have many of them in it. It's not the whole book, but it is a big part of the book. Every month has an acrostic poem of it's name. I've got that part of the book done. That was an automatic 12 poems. I also wrote a sonnet for every season as well as 3 haiku's for each season. (As well as acrostics for each season too, automatically giving me another 4 poems). Then there is a lot of free verse in "Seasons of Sensation". I'm going to sign off now, I need to work more on my book than I need to write my blog!

 

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