How to Avoid Cliches in Poetry
Quick answer: How to avoid cliches in poetry: spot stock phrases, replace them with observed detail, and push each image one step further. A working poet's method.
Avoid cliches by learning to recognise them, then replacing each one with a detail you actually observed rather than a phrase you inherited. A cliche is any expression that arrives pre-assembled: broken heart, time heals, dancing in the rain, eyes like stars. The test is brutal and simple: if you have read the phrase before, the reader has too, and it will pass through them without friction, which in poetry means without effect.
Cliches are not a moral failing; they are the brain's autocomplete. Everyone drafts them. The craft is in the second pass, where you catch the ready-made phrase and ask what you actually saw, heard or felt before the stock language covered it. Under every cliche in your draft, a specific memory is usually waiting.
Build your detector
You cannot cut what you cannot see, and cliches are camouflaged by familiarity. Sharpen the detector two ways. First, read widely in contemporary poetry, because heavy readers develop an allergy to secondhand phrasing; you start to flinch at 'shattered dreams' the way a musician flinches at a wrong note. Second, keep a private blacklist. Every time you catch a stock phrase in your own drafts, add it to the list. Most poets discover they have personal favourites they reach for under pressure, and naming them breaks most of their power.
The replacement method
Deleting a cliche leaves a hole; the method is substitution. Ask: what was the real, particular version of this? 'My heart was broken' becomes what actually happened: 'I kept setting two alarms, then remembering.' 'She lit up the room' becomes the observed behaviour: 'people angled their chairs toward her without noticing.' The formula is to trade the summary for the evidence. Evidence cannot be cliche, because your Tuesday, your kitchen and your particular person have never appeared in anyone else's poem. This is also why contest judges score creativity and language as separate criteria: fresh phrasing is measurable, and it is the first thing that separates a longlist from the pile.
Push past the first image
Cliche also operates at the level of ideas: the first image anyone would think of is a communal image, not yours. Workshop teachers call the fix 'second thought, third thought'. If the poem is about autumn and you reach for falling leaves, note it and reach again: what else is true of autumn? The smell of pencil shavings, wasps drunk on windfalls, the heating clicking on at night. By the third reach you are usually in territory only you occupy. Rilke's advice to a young poet still holds: describe your everyday truthfully, and if your daily life seems poor, blame your seeing, not your life.
What poets can take from this
- Keep a blacklist of stock phrases you personally overuse.
- Replace every cliche with the specific evidence it was summarising.
- For each subject, reject your first image and take your second or third thought.
- Read your draft asking of every phrase: have I seen this in print before?
- Let one trusted reader mark anything that sounds familiar; outsiders spot camouflage faster.
Try it yourself
Write down five cliches about the sea, then write a sea poem that contradicts all five using only details from one specific visit: the car park, the wind, what people actually said. No waves crashing, no endless blue.
Questions
What counts as a cliche in poetry?
Any phrase or image that arrives ready-made from previous use: broken hearts, weathered storms, eyes like oceans. If the words assembled themselves before you thought, it is probably cliche.
Can cliches ever be used on purpose?
Yes, when the poem visibly knows what it is doing: quoting a cliche to interrogate or reverse it, or letting a character speak in cliches to reveal them. The frame must make the intention unmistakable.
Are common themes like love and death cliche?
No, themes cannot be cliche, only treatments can. Love and death are permanent subjects; the task is bringing them evidence and phrasing that only your life could supply.
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.