Charm
Quick answer: A charm is a poem of magical instruction, words arranged to heal, protect or curse. Learn how charm poems work, their ancient roots, and ways to write one.
A charm is a poem intended to work magic: a spoken formula meant to heal a wound, protect a traveller, bless a field or curse an enemy. In the oldest poetry we have, verse and spell are the same technology, since rhythm, repetition and rhyme were believed to give words power over the world. The charm is poetry at its most practical and most ancient.
Modern poets no longer expect a stanza to cure a fever, but the charm survives as a mode: incantatory, commanding, built on repetition and direct address to things that cannot ordinarily hear us. Whenever a poem says out, or rise, or come back to something beyond persuasion, it is drawing on charm energy.
How It Works
Charms rely on the machinery of ritual. They repeat key words in patterns, often three times; they name the affliction or enemy precisely, since naming was believed to grant control; they issue commands in the imperative mood; and they frequently tell a tiny story in which the desired result has already happened. An invented example: Fever, I have counted your nine red doors. / Fever, I have closed them one by one. / Go out by the tenth, and take your shoes.
Sound matters more than sense. Heavy alliteration, drumming stress patterns and strange, archaic phrasing all signal that this is not ordinary speech, which is exactly the effect a poet can borrow.
Where You Will See It
The Anglo-Saxon metrical charms, recorded around the tenth century, include remedies for unfruitful land, a sudden stitch of pain, and a swarm of bees, each mixing verse with ritual instructions. Similar material exists in nearly every tradition, from Vedic hymns to Finnish spell-songs that fed into the Kalevala. Shakespeare's witches in Macbeth chant in charm metre, and modern poets such as Ted Hughes and Lucille Clifton wrote poems that summon, bless and banish with unmistakable charm rhythms.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Write toward an outcome you genuinely want and cannot get by ordinary means: a charm against insomnia, a blessing for a child leaving home, a spell to make a hospital corridor kind. Use imperatives, repeat structures exactly, and address the problem as if it could hear you. The form rewards conviction; a half-hearted charm is just a list. Incantatory poems also perform well when read aloud, worth remembering since judges at Writory score language and emotion, and charm rhythms deliver both fast.
What poets can take from this
- Use the imperative mood; charms command rather than describe.
- Repeat a key phrase at least three times, changing one word on the final repetition.
- Name the thing you address with obsessive precision, as if naming were catching.
- Lean on alliteration and heavy stress to make the poem sound older than you are.
- State the desired result as if it has already happened; charms speak in accomplished fact.
Try it yourself
Write a charm of 9 to 15 lines to protect someone you love from something ordinary, such as a Monday, a diagnosis wait, or a long drive in rain. Repeat one line three times and let it change slightly at each return.
Questions
What is the difference between a charm and a prayer poem?
A prayer petitions a higher power and accepts that the answer may be no. A charm assumes the words themselves do the work, commanding the world directly. Prayers ask; charms perform.
Are charm poems still written today?
Yes, constantly, though usually as literary spells rather than believed magic. Poets write charms against grief, blessings for new houses and curses on injustice, using the old machinery of repetition and command for emotional force.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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