How to write Dark Poetry
- CoraLynn
- Oct 20, 2025
- 5 min read
Spooky season has arrived! The gloom that lingers between the bare trees, the darkening of days, the dusty skies of October make this time of the year the perfect invitation for us to explore this darkness that surrounds the season of souls.
Poetry offers us a deeper insight into what it is to be human. Both the light and the dark that coexist in us. Fear, anger, and grief are the most intense emotions we can experience, and that is where dark poetry comes in to lend it a voice.
In this blog, we will explore what dark poetry is and 6 easy tips to make your poems feel darker and haunting. I have included 5 creative writing prompts at the end for you to try out some of these tips.
What is dark poetry?
Dark poetry is simply poetry that holds darker elements of the human experience. When people think of poetry, they mostly think about desire, romance, yearning, and nature. Dark poetry instead leans into the moments of tragedy, grief, suffering, fear, or death.
Now, dark poetry is not all about being spooky. Sometimes it is about the ache of lost time, the loneliness in a crowded room, the haunting of regrets. Through dark poetry, poets explore raw, human emotions and the dark depths of the human mind.
For me, writing dark poetry has helped me to speak about my mental health. It helps me to paint a picture for the reader to understand what it was like for me to feel my loss, grief, and a crippling apathy for life. It helps me to give space to the darker side of my mind and reflect just how much grief I am still carrying within me.
Some famous dark poets are: Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Charles Baudelaire, John Keats, to name a few. These poets did not shy away from writing about their suffering, grief, or linger on the subject of death.
There have always been dark poets, and recently it has become popular again because we keep searching for that honest, emotional connection, and poetry holds the mirror to the human experience.
6 easy tips to help you write Dark Poetry.
Build up tension.
Fear does not start with blood and gore. We create fear through building up tension from the unease of the unknown. Suggest what is unseen and then let the reader’s mind do all of the terrifying work.
For example: “Even though the silent darkness blinded me, all my senses suddenly screamed.”
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping”
- Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven
Word choices.
Choosing the right words in your poem is how you create tension, the right setting, and wickedly play with the reader's senses. You should choose words that evoke the darker nature of things, for example, rot, shadows, bruises, or decay.
Hard consonants (like: crack, drag, clutch) create a physical sense of violence, while long vowels (like: ooze, groan, moan) slow the pace and make your words feel heavy and claustrophobic.
For example, “The house moaned in the night as the wind crawled underneath the floorboards.”
Invoke the reader's senses
Dark poetry becomes immersive when we call our other senses into play. Do not just show what is happening, but make the reader smell the scent of rot, hear the tapping against the window, feel the damp chill slithering along their spine.
A popular way this is used in poetry is by mixing sensory experiences. By blending sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch, you can deepen the reading experience even further.
For example: “The red of blood screamed”, “the silence in the house was deafening”,“he tasted of apples and rot.”
Play with rhythm and line breaks.
Make the form you are writing in a part of the suspense. By using abrupt line breaks, you can mimic the sense of panic or a quickening heartbeat. By using long sentences, you can create a sense of dread or suffering.
Example short line breaks:
“It was one knock,
two knocks,
never a third one,
before the door opened.”
Example long sentences:
“Something was crawling closer in the darkness, silently observing me through the cracks in the walls.”
Repetition
I think we have all screamed into an empty space and heard the repetition of an echo answering back.
Repetition of words can create this feeling of being followed, or being haunted by something lurking in the darkness. It can also create a sense of madness. Of being fixated on that one single thing that keeps showing itself over and over again.
“Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
are dull, dull as the triple
tongues of dull, fat Cerberus
who wheezes at the gate.”
- Sylvia Plath, Fever 103°
Leave the door open for interpretation.
A good dark poem leaves the reader hooked and haunted. End your poem on an unfinished thought or a question that bites. By leaving the door open, the reader is able to interpret your poem in their own unique way, adding value to the reading experience.
For example:
“I blew out the last candle,
when the darkness whispered my name.”
“Despair surrounded me once more.
Will I ever be free from this pain?”
"What am I doing
with a lung full of dust
and a tongue of wood,
knee-deep in the cold
swamped by flowers?
-Sylvia Plath, Leaving early
Writing prompts
Write about a funeral for someone who is still alive.
Write about the decay of nature happening this season. Does the earth mourn during this season?
Write a poem that uses repetition as the haunting echoes of someone near you.
Write about a shadow of someone who is no longer among the living.
Write about a distorted reflection in a broken mirror.
While writing dark poetry, remember to look for the beauty in the broken, the love in the grief, the longing silenced by the pain. Dark poetry should reflect raw, unfiltered human emotions and not only spooky vibes. So write from out of the darkness and don’t be afraid when the darkness whispers back.
I hope these tips will help you on your way to writing a dark poem. If you have written with the prompts, then let me know in the comments! I would love to read your take on these. If you found these tips helpful, consider subscribing to my newsletter for more easy writing tips.
Thank you so much for being here! I appreciate all of your support on this creative journey with my blog!
All my love,
CoraLynn
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