Free verse
A modern poetic form that abandons regular metre and rhyme scheme, allowing poets to structure lines according to meaning, breath, syntax, or visual impact rather than formal constraints. Free verse prioritises natural speech rhythms and varied line lengths.
Real World
T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' (1922) uses free verse to mirror the fractured experience of post-war London, shifting between languages, voices, and line lengths without a fixed metre, making the poem itself feel as dislocated as the society it depicts.
Exam Focus
Never call free verse 'unstructured'—identify its alternative organising principles like repetition, imagery patterns, or syntactic parallelism.
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