How to Give Feedback—and Why Giving it Helps You

This article is for: Everyone!

Feedback is one of the most valuable things for getting better at poetry quickly.

In a previous article, I went over how to use feedback when you receive it. In this article, I want to address the other side of the coin: giving feedback.

Now, giving feedback might seem unrelated to improving your own poetry, except in the general sense that if you want to get feedback regularly you’ll probably have to give some, for example in a writers’ group.

But I believe that giving feedback to other poets will directly benefit you and your drafting.

Not only that, but the more you do it and the better you get at it, the more it will be good for you.

I’m going to cover 3 things about giving feedback:

Why it helps you
How to do it
How to feel confident about doing it

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How giving feedback to others helps you

It’s pretty clear that giving feedback to other poets helps them.

They get to hear what's working in their poem already, so they learn about their strengths. They also get your suggestions for how to change it, and so they can improve that poem. Over time, they can use this feedback to develop their skills and knowledge. So obviously, getting feedback is helpful.

I don’t want to diminish the importance of helping other poets out like this: it can be very rewarding, and I hope you'll want to do it just for that reason.

But what you may not realize is that every time you do this, you also benefit yourself.

In fact, you can learn as much from giving feedback as you can from receiving it.

How come?

1. When you give feedback on a poem, you practice using and applying everything you know about poetry

When you give detailed feedback, it means not only that you’ve engaged with a poem deeply, but also that you’ve thought about many ways in which the poem might be improved.

For example, when commenting on a poem, you might think about:

How do you feel about the poem—how do you react to it as a fellow human being?
What is the overall meaning of the poem? Is it clear? Do all the parts work together to make this meaning?
Are there parts where too much is being said? How much could be taken out?
How well is the poem structured? Is it too long? Too short? Could parts work better if they were moved around?
What about the line breaks and sentence rhythms? Do they fit what's being said?
Are there parts you don't understand? What's making them obscure?
Are the images and word choices fresh, exact, exciting? If not, how could they be changed?
Does the voice sound authentic? Does it resonate with the meaning of the poem?

That's a lot of poetry thinking!

It's really good to practice all that, and it will help you apply it to your own poems later.

This is especially true because…

2. You see other people's poetry more objectively than you do your own

When you look at our own poems, you tend to see what you think is there—even when it isn’t!

You have an idea of what you wanted to say, and you probably believe you’ve conveyed it—when in fact your reader may be utterly confused!
Or, you may have said what you wanted to say many times more than you needed to, and the poem needs a lot of cutting!

Both of these problems, and others, are hard for you to see—that’s why getting feedback is so helpful.

But what can you do when you want to redraft a poem and feedback isn’t available?

At moments like that, the time you’ve put into other people’s poems will come to your aid.

The more you’ve looked with clear eyes at the poems of others, the easier it becomes (though it is still always hard) to apply the same objectivity to your own poems.

You may see yourself making the same errors you’ve seen in a dozen other poems—so you can correct them
You may also see yourself getting things right—which is always pleasant to feel!
You may even be able to imagine yourself reading your poem as if it were someone else’s, and hear what feedback you’d give yourself at a writers’ group!

So by helping others, you’re learning a lot more about helping yourself.

3. You can get new ideas, inspiration, and the drive to emulate

Lastly, whenever you read and think about other people’s poems, you may well find yourself getting all kinds of positive creative energies.

You may read someone else using a form or techniuque that’s new to you, and feel inspired to try it yourself.
You may encounter a topic that sparks something in you.
The success of a really good poem may fire you up to try do as well or better, which is useful motivation!

Overall, over the last 15 years, I've read and commented on thousands of poems, and I have learned almost as much from giving feedback as I have from receiving it.

How to give feedback to another poet

1. Start with what you like or appreciate

Everyone likes to hear some reassurance to begin with! So find something you like in the draft, and tell the writer what it was and why you liked it.

2. Be Specific

While it can be nice to hear "This is great!" or "I loved this!", feedback that only says that doesn't help a poet improve their work. Find something specific that you like in the piece - an image, an imaginative word choice, a line break, a piece of assonance. Tell the author what it was and why you liked it. Then they have a good idea how they can repeat their success in another poem.

3. Focus on Reasons and Development, not Criticism

After you've praised, you can move on to parts of the poem that you think need more work. Again, be as specific as you can, and also say why something isn't working for you. This gives the writer insight they can really use to redraft their work.

If you can think of suggestions for what else they could do, then throw those in too!

4. Finish with Appreciation

At the end, remember that the writer took a risk sharing this poem with you, and that deserves respect. So finish off with some whole-hearted appreciation, telling them how you are glad they shared, and why.

Another way to think of this is the Praise Sandwich:

Tell someone something you liked about their piece of work
Offer any thoughts of things that might improve it from a reader’s point of view
Share the overall positive thing you gained from that person sharing the piece

How to get confident about giving feedback

1. Start small

If you've never given feedback before, don't feel like you have to start with a long comment! Just give a brief Praise Sandwich. You can build up length and detail as you learn more.

2. Don't worry if you don't know how to make the poem better

Whilst it's helpful if you can make suggestions for how the poet might redraft their work, it's not essential. You can still give valuable feedback by saying just what you liked and what worked less well for you. When you get more experienced you can add more detail to your suggestions, but you don't have to start that way.

3. Practice!

Like most things in life, giving feedback is a skill that gets stronger with practice. The more you do it, the easier it get. So take as many opportunities to give feedback as you have time for!

Next Steps

If you’re already a member of a feedback group, try to become aware of what you might learn for yourself from each poem you comment on. For example:

What well-used tools or approaches could you borrow?
What weaknesses do you see that might be present also in some of your poems?

If you don’t have a feedback group or partner, look for one!

As far as I know, all American states have their own poetry societies or writers’ associations, and these often give opportunities for feedback work (like the Give & Take scheme in Maine). And in these Zoom-friendly days, distance is no object.
In Britain, the Poetry Society arranges local groups called Stanzas for feedback purposes.
Or, you could try my Poetry Parlor, where you’ll give and get feedback from other poets, as well as from me!

If you’re by yourself, do a “role play” with yourself, where you are both the poet being critiqued and the poet doing the critique!

Have as much fun with this as you can.

For example, you might set up a table with chairs on opposite sides, so that on one side you are the writer, and on the other, you are the poet giving the feedback.

Don’t knock this till you’ve tried it—changing physical location can change your mental point of view a lot!