How to Animate a Poem Without Squashing the Poetry Out of It

Poems and animation are old friends who have never been properly introduced. Both work in images. Both love a pause. Both can make a small thing feel enormous. Yet an animated poem goes wrong easily: every word gets its own clip-art picture, the voice rushes, and the quiet bits get buried under music. Done well, though, a short animated poem is one of the most shareable things a writer can make. Here is how to do it well.

What kind of poem works best as an animation?

Short poems with concrete images work best: 4 to 16 lines, with things you can picture, like a kettle, a field, a mother's coat. Poems built on abstract ideas (time, truth, becoming) are harder, because there is nothing to hold on to. Rhythm helps too. A poem with a clear pulse gives the film a pace to follow.

• The haiku Three lines, one image, ten seconds. The smallest perfect film there is.
• The love poem Eight lines for an anniversary, read by the person who wrote it. See anniversary video ideas.
• The kid's poem A poem your eight-year-old wrote about the cat. Animate it exactly, wobbly rhymes included.
• The seasonal poem First frost, first swim, last leaf. Short, visual, perfect for a greeting.
• The gentle goodbye A few quiet lines for someone who has died, with slow, simple pictures. See what to say in a memorial video.
• The funny verse Limericks and comic rhymes animate beautifully, because the last line is a punchline.

How many lines should go in each scene?

One stanza or two lines per scene is a good default. Short poems can give each line its own scene. The rule is simple: change the picture when the poem's image changes, not on a timer. If three lines describe one field, stay in the field. If line four jumps to the city, so does the film.

Mark it on paper first. Draw a slash wherever the image changes. Those slashes are your scene cuts, and you have just storyboarded a poem without drawing a thing.

Should the pictures show exactly what the words say?

Not always. Showing every noun literally (moon, then heart, then bird) turns a poem into a picture dictionary. Better: show the main image of each stanza, and let some lines play over a held picture. Sometimes the strongest choice is a lateral one, where the line says "I waited" and the picture shows only a cup of tea going cold.

How long will my poem be as a film?

Poems are read slower than normal speech, with pauses between lines and longer ones between stanzas. Plan on about two words per second or a little less, plus a breath at each line break. Read it aloud with a stopwatch; that is your film length, give or take a few seconds of quiet at the start and end.

If your favorite poem is long, animate one stanza. A single stanza, done beautifully, is better than the whole poem rushed. For more on length, see how long a short animated film should be.

Animating a poem in five steps

1. Step 1

   Choose the poem, or the part. Short, visual, and yours or cleared to use.

2. Step 2

   Mark the image changes. A slash on paper wherever the picture should change. Each slash is a cut.

3. Step 3

   Record the reading. Slower than feels right. Pause at line breaks. Breathe at stanza breaks. Record three takes somewhere quiet.

4. Step 4

   Pick the mood for the music. Quiet, warm, playful? Music should sit under the voice like a rug, not stand on the table.

5. Step 5

   Watch it with your eyes closed, then open. First check the voice and music alone. Then check that no picture fights the words.

Who should read the poem aloud?

The poet, if possible. A writer reading their own poem carries its rhythm in a way nobody else can, even with a shaky voice. For a poem written by someone else, choose a reader who loves it. For a child's poem, let the child read it. The wobble is the charm. Our guide to turning a voice recording into a cartoon covers getting clean sound on a phone.

Can you animate someone else's poem?

Only if you have the right to. Your own poems are yours. Poems by living poets, or recently published ones, usually need permission from the poet or the publisher, even for a small film. Very old poems are often in the public domain, but the rules vary by country, so check before you share. When in doubt, ask. Poets tend to answer kindly.

Leave room. The best line in the film might be the silence after the last one.

Making it in Nine: a poem, pictured

You have two good ways in. Choose A voice recording and upload yourself reading the poem: the film runs as long as you read, with your voice as its sound. Or choose A script and paste the poem with a blank line between stanzas; each paragraph becomes a scene, in your order, with your words. Either way, you watch while the crew draws the scenes and adds music and sound effects, and the crew checks the film before you see it.

Then ask for changes plainly: "hold the last image longer," "quieter music," "warmer colors." You get a video file in wide, tall and square. Film is $29 a month for films up to 20 seconds, which fits a haiku or a short verse; a sonnet needs Production (90 seconds). See the plans or try it with a poem.