Hello.
I am in the process of putting together an anthology of poems for publication on Amazon create space which consist of free verse, acrostic, senru/haiku, tanka, rococco, minute etc. They avoid the standard 'beats' such as iambic/spondee/trochee etc because I wanted to avoid artificiality and instead convey what I want to say, rather than conform to certain styles.
The crux of my question is, however, is there any particular order in which the poems should appear?
Does it depend on style, type of poem, theme, context etc?
I am inclined to upload them in the chronological order in which I wrote them.
Thank you.
Edward,
Thanks for your response. I had considered chronological order too. Indeed, many of the poems were written over the course of 2017/18 and the roots of the verse are from reading other poets and my own previously self-published volumes of haiku/senru (these poems are ordered into categories/themes).
As for being studied in future, I trust they will sell well and be studied in my own lifetime....
Look to the future.
Chronological order is probably best, for at some time in the future, when your work is being assessed by experts and students, it could be highly beneficial for them to know the order you wrote the poems; for the simple reason it will show how your work matured as your skills developed.
Most of us (everyone?) start off writing rubbish, yet if we have any skill at all we develop. It is that development which can be of interest to others.
If you have reason to divide your book into sections (different styles for instance), then I think date order is still the best way to treat every individual section.
You may not wish to have dates shown on the pages, but some form of listing elsewhere in the book would help others.