How to Get Feedback on Your Poems
Quick answer: How to get feedback on your poems: critique groups, workshops, trading partners and scored contests. Where honest readers live and how to ask them well.
Get feedback on your poems from four dependable sources: a critique group or workshop, an individual trading partner who swaps poems with you, online critique communities where feedback is the currency, and contests that return scores or comments to every entrant. What all four share, and what friends and family cannot offer, is distance: readers with no stake in your feelings, responding to the words on the page rather than to you.
How you ask matters nearly as much as who you ask. 'What do you think?' invites politeness; specific questions invite information. Ask where a reader got confused, where their attention dipped, which line they would cut, and what they think the poem is about, that last one is quietly devastating and endlessly useful, because the gap between what you meant and what they received is exactly where revision should aim.
The four sources, and what each is best at
Different feedback channels answer different questions, so match the source to what you need.
How to receive feedback without wasting it
The reflex to explain your poem in response to criticism is universal and fatal: the poem will be alone with every future reader, so if it needs your commentary, the commentary belongs in the poem. Take notes in silence, thank people, and sort responses later using the workshop rule of thumb: where readers report a problem, believe them; where they prescribe a fix, stay sceptical, since diagnosis is reliable and prescriptions reflect the poem they would have written. Watch for convergence. One reader disliking your ending is taste; three readers stumbling at the same stanza is data.
Then let feedback cool for a few days before revising. Same-day revisions tend to overcorrect, sanding off the strangeness that was the poem's best feature along with its faults.
Why friends and family cannot do this job
The people who love you read the poet, not the poem. They hear your voice in the lines, fill gaps with what they know of your life, and protect the relationship with kindness, all of which makes their praise sincere and useless. There is a second, subtler problem: they usually do not read poetry, so 'this is lovely' means 'this resembles what I think poems sound like', which rewards your most conventional work. Keep sharing with loved ones for joy; it matters. Just collect your craft information elsewhere, from readers who know what a line break can do and owe you nothing.
What poets can take from this
- Ask specific questions: where did you drift, what would you cut, what is this poem about?
- Believe diagnoses, doubt prescriptions.
- Revise only where two or more readers converge, unless one note rings instantly true.
- Stay silent while receiving critique; explanation belongs in the poem.
- Give more feedback than you take; critiquing trains your own eye fastest.
- Let notes cool for days before revising, so you keep the poem's strangeness.
Try it yourself
Give a poem of yours to two readers separately and ask each only one question: 'What is this poem about?' Write a new draft aimed at closing the gap between their answers and your intention, without adding a single explaining line.
Questions
Where can I get feedback on poems for free?
Library writing groups, online critique communities like Reddit's poetry critique forums or workshop Discords, and poem swaps with a trading partner all cost nothing. Free entry routes with scored feedback also exist in some contests, including Writory's free entry rewards.
How do I know which feedback to ignore?
Discount notes that ask the poem to become a different poem, and any note nobody else echoes, unless it strikes you as instantly, uncomfortably true. Trust converging reports of confusion or drift; those are facts about your draft, not opinions.
Should I pay for poetry feedback?
Not at the start; free channels cover a beginner's needs completely. A paid manuscript critique from an established poet can be worth it later, when you have a polished collection-in-progress and specific questions no group has answered.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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