Bestiary
Quick answer: A bestiary is a collection of poems or entries describing animals, real or imaginary, each carrying a moral or symbolic meaning. Learn its history and uses.
A bestiary is a collection of short descriptions of animals, real or legendary, in which each creature carries a moral, spiritual or symbolic meaning. The medieval versions were illustrated manuscripts where the pelican, the phoenix and the unicorn appeared beside lions and bees, every beast read as a lesson from God's second book, the natural world. In poetry, the term now covers any sequence of animal poems organised as a menagerie.
The form endures because animals are irresistible mirrors. Writing a creature lets a poet talk about appetite, fear, loyalty or death at one remove, with the animal's strangeness keeping sentimentality at bay. A bestiary also gives writers something rare: a ready-made structure for a whole collection, one beast per poem, that never feels mechanical.
How It Works
A classic bestiary entry has two movements: first the creature is described, with loving attention to its real or invented habits, then the meaning is drawn out, whether stated openly or left glinting under the surface. An invented example of the turn: The moth files no complaint against the flame; / it simply keeps revising its approach. Observation first, human implication second, and no need to spell the lesson out.
Sequences gain power from variety. Poets alternate long and short entries, tender and savage creatures, accurate zoology and outright invention, so the collection reads like a walk through a strange zoo rather than a list.
Where You Will See It
The ancestor is the Greek Physiologus, compiled in the early centuries AD, whose animal allegories fed the great illuminated bestiaries of medieval England and France. Guillaume Apollinaire revived the form for modern poetry with Le Bestiaire in 1911, a set of tiny rhymed animal portraits. Marianne Moore built a career on scrupulously observed creatures, Ted Hughes wrote animal poems of raw force in books like Crow, and Jorge Luis Borges compiled the Book of Imaginary Beings, a prose bestiary poets raid to this day.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Start with three animals you have actually watched, because observed detail is what separates a bestiary from a greetings card. Give each poem one behaviour, not the whole species. Then add one invented or mythical creature to the set; the fictional beast often ends up telling the most truth. If you write a themed sequence, a bestiary makes a memorable contest portfolio, and a single strong animal poem stands perfectly well alone in a monthly round at Writory.
What poets can take from this
- Observe before you moralise; the animal must be real on the page before it means anything.
- Limit each entry to one behaviour or habit rather than a full natural history.
- Mix real and imaginary creatures to keep a sequence unpredictable.
- Resist stating the moral; let the human meaning arrive through word choice and tone.
- Vary entry lengths across a sequence so the menagerie has rhythm as a whole.
Try it yourself
Write three bestiary entries of under twelve lines each: one for an animal you saw this week, one for an animal you fear, and one for a creature you invent. Give each a hidden human meaning you never state directly.
Questions
What is the difference between a bestiary and a fable?
A fable tells a story in which animals act and speak, ending in a moral. A bestiary entry describes a creature and interprets its nature, usually without a plot. Fables are narratives; bestiaries are portraits.
Do bestiary poems have to include mythical animals?
No. Medieval bestiaries mixed real and legendary beasts because compilers could not always tell them apart, but a modern bestiary can be entirely zoological, entirely invented, or any blend the poet likes.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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