Dating
Two strangers performing their best selves across a small table: poetry was built for this.
Quick answer: Learn to write poems about dating: imagery, techniques, cliches to avoid, plus exercises, prompts and a checklist in this free craft guide by Writory.
What this theme is
Dating is courtship made visible, and courtship is theatre. Two people arrive with edited versions of themselves, the good shirt, the rehearsed anecdotes, the menu scanned for something that cannot splash, and spend an evening deciding whether the unedited versions might one day be allowed to meet. A dating poem watches this performance with affection and a sharp eye. Its material is the gap between what is said and what is meant, the costume and the person breathing inside it.
The theme has its own dramatic structure, which poets should exploit. Every date is a one-act play with a built-in arc: anticipation, arrival, the wobble, the recovery or the collapse, the doorstep verdict. And beneath the comedy runs real stakes, loneliness, hope, the courage it takes to be examined by a stranger. The best dating poems keep both registers alive: the spilled wine and the silent, enormous question of whether this might be the person.
Why poets return to it
Poets choose dating because it is dense with observable behaviour, and poetry feeds on the observable. A single date supplies gesture, dialogue, costume, setting and subtext in one contained evening; few themes hand a writer so much stage business. It is also underwritten territory: love and heartbreak overflow the anthologies, but the awkward, hopeful middle ground of actually meeting people remains comparatively fresh.
It rewards contest writers for the same reason. Writory scores entries on creativity, emotion, structure, language and theme, and a dating poem with one precisely observed evening, real dialogue, a genuine wobble, routinely outshines another abstract meditation on romance.
Where it comes from
Courtship rituals are among poetry's oldest scenes. The troubadours turned wooing into an art with rules and scorekeeping; Elizabethan sonneteers wrote what were essentially very elevated chat-up campaigns; Robert Burns caught the flirtations of fairs and firesides in Scots songs that still get sung. The rituals change costume every century, but the choreography, display, appraisal, nerve, is constant.
The modern city gave the theme its current form. Frank O'Hara made lunches, cinemas and shared drinks into love poetry that feels like being alive on a Tuesday, and contemporary poets have carried the tradition into the age of profiles and swipes, writing the strange new courtship of meeting a stranger you already half-know from their photographs. The theme is still being written in real time, which is an invitation.
The elements that carry it
- Table-scale props, two glasses, a shared plate, a phone placed face down, carry the evening's negotiations in miniature.
- Costume details, the ironed shirt, the shoes that pinch, the perfume applied then half washed off, show the labour of self-presentation.
- Dialogue fragments, the question asked twice, the answer rehearsed at home, let the poem's soundtrack be the date itself.
- Transit imagery, the walk to the venue, the bus home alone or not alone, frames the one-act play with before and after.
- Subtext signals, a chair angled closer, a coat kept on, the check requested early, speak the verdict before anyone says it.
Techniques that work
- Structure the poem as the date's arc, anticipation, wobble, verdict, and let stanza breaks mark the acts.
- Write the double transcript: alternate what is said aloud with what is thought, and let the gaps between the two carry the comedy and the ache.
- Choose one prop and track it through the poem, the bottle emptying, the candle shortening, so an object keeps the time the couple is losing track of.
- Give the wobble its full weight: the moment the performance slips, an unplanned laugh, a truth that escapes, is usually where the real poem is hiding.
- Try the aftermath angle: the poem set on the journey home, replaying the evening, often holds more feeling than the evening itself.
Mistakes to avoid
- Pure cringe comedy. An evening of disasters with no stakes is a sketch, not a poem; keep the loneliness and hope in view under the laughter.
- Sneering at the ritual. Mocking dating as shallow is cheap; the courage of two strangers trying deserves at least the poem's respect.
- Skipping the specifics. 'We had dinner and talked' is nothing; the reader needs the exact restaurant, the exact question, the exact silence.
- Ending with the kiss or the ghosting as a punchline. Both are expected; end instead on the small true moment the speaker keeps replaying.
An exercise
Reconstruct a date, real or invented, as two columns: the left column holds five things that were said, the right column five things that were thought at the same moments. Weave the columns into a single poem, alternating line by line.
A challenge
Write three short poems about the same first date from three vantage points: before it, during it, and one year later. Do not reveal until the third poem whether they ever met again.
A prompt to start from
Write a dating poem in which everything important is communicated through what happens to the food: what is ordered, shared, abandoned, or eaten too fast.
Before you submit
- The evening is rendered in specific props, dialogue and gestures.
- The poem respects the participants rather than sneering at the ritual.
- A wobble or slip in the performance is present and weighted.
- Real stakes, loneliness, hope, courage, are visible beneath the surface.
- The ending lands on a replayed detail, not a predictable kiss or punchline.
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.