Litany
Quick answer: A litany is a poem built on ritual repetition, a chanted list where one phrase returns line after line. Learn how litany poems work and how to write one.
A litany is a poem structured as ritual repetition: a list in which the same word, phrase or grammatical frame returns line after line, gathering force with each pass. The form comes from liturgy, where a leader chants petitions and the congregation answers with a fixed response such as pray for us or deliver us. Poets kept the engine and dropped the requirement of belief.
Repetition is the oldest spell in poetry, and the litany is repetition made architecture. Because the frame stays constant, every small variation inside it lights up, which lets a poet build enormous emotional pressure from grammatically simple lines. It is also among the most welcoming forms for beginners: if you can make a list, you can begin a litany. Making the list transcend itself is the craft.
How It Works
A litany fixes one element and varies another. You might repeat an opening phrase, an invented example being: Blessed be the burnt toast, blessed be the missed train, / blessed be the phone that rang one ring too late. The repeated frame becomes a drumbeat, and the reader starts anticipating it, which means you can time surprises against that expectation, breaking the pattern exactly once for maximum effect.
Sequence matters as much as repetition. A litany should escalate, moving from small items to unbearable ones, or circle back so the final repetition means something different from the first. A list that could be shuffled without loss is not yet a poem.
Where You Will See It
The form's church ancestry survives in the Book of Common Prayer and in Catholic litanies of the saints. Christopher Smart's eighteenth-century Jubilate Agno, with its long anaphoric praise of his cat Jeoffry, is a landmark literary litany. Walt Whitman built whole sections of Leaves of Grass on litany engines, and twentieth-century poets carried it forward: Allen Ginsberg's Howl runs on who after who, and Billy Collins wrote a poem actually titled Litany that affectionately mocks the form's habits while using them.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Choose a frame with room in it: blessed be, I remember, forgive the, in the house of. Draft thirty lines fast without judging, then keep the ten that surprise you and order them so the stakes climb. Break the pattern once, near the end, and let the broken line carry the poem's real weight. Read the result aloud, because litanies are scored for the breath, and the ear will find the dead spots a page hides.
What poets can take from this
- Pick a repeating frame flexible enough to hold both comedy and grief.
- Overdraft heavily, then cut; a litany's quality is decided in the pruning.
- Arrange items to escalate, saving the most costly line for late in the poem.
- Break the pattern exactly once, and make the break the emotional centre.
- Let the final repetition land differently from the first, changed by everything between.
Try it yourself
Write a litany of at least 18 lines beginning every line with the same two words of your choosing, such as I kept or bless the. Somewhere in the last five lines, break the pattern once, then return to it for a single closing line.
Questions
What is the difference between a litany and anaphora?
Anaphora is the device, the repetition of a word or phrase at the start of successive lines. A litany is a whole form built from that device, a ritual list with the shape and momentum of chant. Litanies use anaphora; anaphora can appear in any poem.
Does a litany have to be religious?
No. The structure comes from worship, but secular litanies are everywhere in modern poetry, listing griefs, gratitudes, accusations and memories. The ritual shape carries seriousness even when no deity is addressed.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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