Dialect
Quick answer: Dialect in poetry means writing in a regional or social variety of a language, with its own grammar and sound. Learn the tradition and how to write it well.
A dialect is a variety of a language spoken by a particular region or social group, with its own vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation: Scots, Geordie, Appalachian English, and hundreds more. Dialect poetry is verse written in such a variety rather than in the standard literary language, so that the poem's music and meaning are inseparable from a specific place and people.
Writing in dialect is always a double act: an artistic choice and a statement about whose speech counts. Robert Burns made lowland Scots carry songs the whole world learned. A century later Paul Laurence Dunbar's dialect poems won him fame he came to find confining, since audiences preferred his plantation-voiced work to his standard English lyrics, a tension that still instructs anyone writing in a marginalised variety. Modern poets such as Tom Leonard, writing Glaswegian, turned dialect itself into the subject: who decides what sounds educated, and what that deciding does.
How It Works
Dialect operates at three levels: vocabulary, grammar and sound. Vocabulary is the easiest to show, the regional word standing where the standard one would. Grammar runs deeper, distinctive verb forms and constructions that structure thought. Sound is the riskiest to render, since phonetic respelling quickly clutters the page. An invented example using a light touch: ye'll no want the big field the day, the burn's away over its banks. Two spellings, one regional word, one grammatical turn, and the voice is placed; nothing more is needed. Suggestion, not transcription, is the working principle.
The Eye Dialect Problem
Eye dialect means respelling words to look non-standard while representing pronunciations that are perfectly ordinary, writing wuz for was or sez for says. Everyone says was that way; only certain speakers get respelled. The practice signals, usually without intending to, that the speaker is uneducated, which is why careless dialect rendering shades into condescension. The craft consensus now runs: carry dialect through word choice and syntax, respell only where the sound genuinely differs and matters, and never respell only the poor. Reading Dunbar's career, celebrated and caged by dialect at once, is the best education in these stakes.
Writing Dialect in Your Own Poems
The first rule matches vernacular writing generally: write a dialect you know from inside, or do the humble, lengthy work of learning one, ideally with speakers checking your drafts. From inside, aim for consistency, a dialect is a rule system, and errors jar its speakers the way a broken metre jars a formalist. Decide early how much standard English surrounds the dialect: a poem wholly in dialect makes one claim, a dialect voice quoted inside a standard frame makes another, and the frame can honour or condescend depending on how it is built.
What poets can take from this
- Suggest dialect through vocabulary and grammar; use respelling sparingly and only for real sound differences.
- Avoid eye dialect, respelling ordinary pronunciations, which marks speakers as ignorant without cause.
- Keep the dialect's rules consistent; its speakers are your strictest and most important audience.
- Watch the frame: standard-English narration around dialect speech can dignify it or patronise it.
- Study Burns, Dunbar and Tom Leonard for three very different answers to the same craft problem.
Try it yourself
Write a poem in which a grandparent gives advice in the dialect they actually spoke, framed by two stanzas in your own current speech. Let the difference between the two languages, not the advice itself, carry the poem's feeling about time and distance.
Questions
What is the difference between dialect and accent?
An accent is only pronunciation, the sound of speech. A dialect includes pronunciation but also its own vocabulary and grammar. You can write standard English in any accent, but writing dialect means using the variety's words and structures.
What is eye dialect and why is it criticised?
Eye dialect respells words to look uneducated, wuz for was, while representing completely standard pronunciation. Since only certain speakers receive this treatment, it functions as social marking rather than sound, and modern writers largely avoid it.
Can I write poems in a dialect I did not grow up speaking?
Tread carefully. It requires long immersion, genuine relationships with the speech community, and speakers willing to check your work, and even then the question of why you are the one writing it deserves an honest answer. Most poets do better writing the speech they own.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
Enter a Writory poetry contest
Enter the September contest and have your own poem read and scored. That first entry makes you a Writorian.