Here are 21 poetcore life ideas that will slow down your life, fill your days with beautiful words, and make your days blissful.
There are certain aesthetics that I like looking at, and then there are aesthetics that make me want to rearrange my life.
Poetcore falls into the second category.
It’s basically the art of living like you could write a beautiful poem at any given moment (even if you can’t).
You read, notice strange details about the world, spend time staring out of windows, and make your life feel more literary.
And while poetcore has a very distinct fashion aesthetic (vintage blazers, oversized knits, loafers, messenger bags, and muted colors), I think the life part of poetcore is much more fun.
You don’t actually need to be a poet, either.
You just need to become more interested in words, observations, beauty, solitude, and your own inner world.
So, if you’ve been craving a slower, more thoughtful, slightly romantic way of living, here are 21 poetcore life ideas to try.
21 Poetcore Lifestyle Tips
1. Carry a tiny notebook everywhere
I have approximately 700 thoughts a day that feel extremely important for about eleven seconds and then disappear forever.
This is why I love carrying a tiny notebook with me.
You can use it for things you overhear, funny thoughts, descriptions, ideas, dreams, questions, or something beautiful you noticed while walking home.
It doesn’t have to become your serious journal.
I actually think it’s more fun if it’s slightly chaotic and full of things that would make absolutely no sense to another person.
A little paper extension of your brain, basically.
2. Start collecting beautiful words
Some words are simply prettier than other words (I don’t make the rules).
You can start keeping a running collection of such words that make you stop while you’re reading.
They could be unusual words you’ve never heard before, words from other languages, old-fashioned words, or normal words that you realize you love.
You can keep them on one page of your journal and add their meanings beside them.
This won’t improve your life, but it will make you feel like a beautiful, mysterious woman in a novel.
3. Read poetry before bed
I love a healthy night routine, but not everything we do before bed needs to be about optimizing sleep.
Some things can just be lovely, which is what this idea is about.
Keep a poetry book near your bed and read a poem or two whenever you feel like it.
Don’t analyze, search for hidden meanings, or force yourself to understand every line. Just read.
Some poems won’t do anything for you, but then one random sentence will hit you so hard that you have to stare at the ceiling afterward.
That’s the good stuff!
4. Write letters to people you love
I know we can text someone in three seconds now, but that’s why handwritten letters are even more special.
Write a note to your best friend after a really good day together, and send your sibling a random note.
Write something sweet inside someone’s birthday card instead of stopping at a ‘Happy birthday’ text.
There is something so sweet about receiving words that someone physically sat down and wrote for you.
And unlike a text buried beneath other messages, a letter can live inside someone’s drawer for years.
I want more things like that, and so should everyone else.
5. Become a regular at a quiet cafe
This is one of those very specific life goals I find so very charming.
Find a cafe you genuinely like and go there often enough that it becomes your cafe.
Ideally, it should have comfortable chairs, decent coffee, and at least one window seat that you can be territorial about.
You can bring a book sometimes, do some journaling, watch the people, or sit there doing nothing productive but just being.
We are always looking for new places to go, but it’s lovely to return to the same place until it starts collecting memories for you.
6. Keep a commonplace book
If you’re someone who screenshots everything because you want to remember it, then you need a commonplace book.
It’s basically one notebook where you collect all the things your brain wants to keep.
It can be a line from a book, something your friend said, a song lyric, advice you needed to hear, a quote from a movie, a recipe, a weird fact, or a paragraph you found beautiful.
It’ll be like a museum of everything that interests you.
And I don’t know about you, but I would much rather flip through that than my screenshots folder.
7. Take walks where you look and hear
Not every walk needs headphones, you know.
I say this as someone who loves having something playing while I walk, but occasionally, leave your ears alone and see what happens.
Notice the houses you always pass, look at people’s gardens, and watch dogs doing important dog business.
See which trees are changing with the season, and notice what the air smells like.
Adulthood makes us efficient at moving through places without actually seeing them.
But a poetcore walk will help you do the opposite of that and become more in tune with yourself and the world.
8. Memorize one poem you love
When was the last time you intentionally memorized something that wasn’t a password? I bet it’s been way too long.
So, pick a poem you really love and learn it slowly.
It feels nice to carry beautiful words around inside your head.
You might remember pieces of it while you’re walking alone, sitting on a train, watching the rain, or having an emotional evening.
Our brains deserve better things to store than Internet audios we’ve heard way too many times.
9. Read books with a pencil in your hand
I used to think writing inside books was disrespectful.
Now I think a book covered in underlines, tiny notes, stars, and random exclamation marks is infinitely more interesting than a perfectly untouched one.
Underline the sentence that makes you want to close the book and think for a minute. Circle beautiful words. Write what you’re thinking in the margins.
And if writing on books still makes your eye twitch, sticky tabs exist for a reason.
You’ll get to reread something five years later and meet the version of yourself who read it first.
10. Write down one thing you notice every day
This might be my favorite poetcore habit because it takes about thirty seconds but can really have a positive impact on you.
At night, instead of asking yourself what you achieved that day, write down one thing you noticed.
Maybe you saw the moon at 5 p.m. Maybe the sunset was particularly pink.
Maybe your mom sounded really happy on the phone. Or maybe you saw a little kid waving at every dog on the street.
Nothing needs to happen with these observations. You’re simply proving to yourself that you were there for your own life.
11. Create a weekly reading hour
I don’t mean reading while you’re eating breakfast, checking your phone, and getting through just four pages.
I mean a proper reading hour.
Make your favorite drink, find somewhere comfortable, put your phone away, and let reading be the main even.
You can even make a ritual around it, like Sunday morning reading, Friday evening reading, or rainy afternoon reading.
Being able to read without having to be somewhere else or do anything else for an hour — it’s a quiet luxury that screams poetcore.
12. Keep paper evidence of your life
I am deeply in favor of keeping tiny things that normal people probably throw away.
Photos capture what things looked like. But pieces of paper capture what that day felt like.
Keep a train ticket from a fun trip, a cafe receipt from the day you spent hours talking to your best friend, museum tickets, postcards, notes, bookmarks, and pretty packaging.
Stick them into your journal and write a sentence beside them.
You’ll get a cozy hobby and also a way to channel your poetcore energy.
13. Dress like you’re heading to a bookstore afterward
You don’t need to buy an entire poetcore wardrobe or suddenly dress like an Oxford professor to embrace poetcore.
Just add pieces that make your normal outfits feel more literary, like:
- Oversized knit
- Vintage-looking blazer
- Loafers
- Long coat
- Scarf
- Brooch
- Tote bag with some pretty lines printed
Whenever I am in the mood to channel my poetcore energy, I just dress thinking I’ll be heading to a bookstore.
If you look like you could reasonably be carrying three secondhand novels in your bag, you’ve nailed it.
14. Write more things by hand
I don’t think handwriting should only survive through journaling and birthday cards.
We all need to be writing more things by hand.
Write your grocery list by hand, plan your week on paper, and copy a beautiful paragraph into your notebook.
Leave a note on someone’s desk and write down the recipe your mom tells you instead of immediately putting it into your Notes app.
Use printables instead of writing things on a tablet screen.
It’s slower and more personal to write things on a piece of paper.
Also, I think seeing pages filled with your own messy handwriting is comforting, and proof that your brain has been here.
15. Claim rainy days for books
Rainy days already have a poetcore feel to them.
So, if you happen to have a rainy day where you don’t have somewhere urgent to be, don’t waste the whole thing scrolling.
Open the curtains, make tea or coffee, grab whatever book you’re currently reading, and sit somewhere you can hear the rain properly.
This is even better when the book matches the weather — fantasy, classics, mysteries, or anything slightly atmospheric.
I firmly believe weather should occasionally be allowed to decide our plans, hence this idea.
16. Press flowers inside your books
This is so unnecessarily romantic, which means I obviously love it.
If you find a tiny flower or interesting leaf on a walk, bring it home and press it inside a heavy book.
Later, you can put it in your journal, use it as a bookmark, frame it, or leave it exactly where it is.
Imagine opening that book three years later and finding a flower from a random afternoon.
You would immediately become emotional about a day you probably couldn’t even remember. Major poetcore energy!
17. Give your current life chapter a title
I’ve done versions of this before, so I think it’s a very fun way to look at your life.
Every few months, ask yourself: If this part of my life were a chapter in a book, what would it be called?
Here are some ideas:
- The Autumn of Getting My Life Together
- A Very Strange September
- The Year She Finally Did It
- Things Are Getting Better
- Witchy Winter Era
Life rarely feels like a story while you’re living it, but looking at it in chapters will make you realize how often things actually change.
It’s a pretty way to define your own story and take charge of your narrative.
18. Write bad poems
I am deliberately calling them bad because otherwise we’ll make this intimidating.
You don’t need to sit down intending to produce good poetry.
You can write six lines about your morning, or write about the first cold day of the year.
You can write something dramatic about missing someone. or describe your room at 2 a.m.
It might turn out to be terrible, but seriously, who cares? You’re not submitting it for a Pulitzer.
Creating something badly is still infinitely more interesting than waiting until you’re talented enough to begin.
19. Wander through old bookstores
I am not asking you to go to a bookstore and spend money. Just wander in it.
Go to the shelves you normally ignore, pick up books because the cover looks interesting, and read random first pages.
Look at old editions, and see if somebody has written their name inside.
Secondhand bookstores are especially perfect for this because every book already has a mystery attached to it.
You can’t help wondering who owned the books, whether they loved the story, and why they gave them away.
You may leave with nothing, or you may leave with a novel you’ve never heard of. Both outcomes count as a successful poetcore day.
20. Take your books outside
Books deserve field trips too.
So, take your books to the park and read underneath a tree. Find a bench somewhere pretty and then sit down to read on it.
You can also carry it to a cafe, read on your balcony in the morning, or take it on a train.
And don’t worry if you only get through eight pages because you keep getting distracted by birds, trees, dogs, clouds, and other people.
That actually feels very on-theme.
Reading outside is half reading, half staring thoughtfully into the distance.
21. Become deeply interested in your own inner world
Now this, my friends, is the real poetcore habit. Always saving the best for last.
Become more interested in your inner world than you are in anybody else’s.
Sure, have outings with friends, meet people, and spend time on the Internet. But don’t let those be your day’s highlights.
Your inner world and the way you spend time with yourself should be bigger than all those things.
Go on long walks, sit by a window and think, and journal for no reason.
Spend loads of time reading, let yourself dream, cultivate soulful hobbies (like tarot or reading under a tree), and talk to yourself like a friend.
Your inner world gets more interesting when you actually spend time inside it. So, nurture it more so that you can truly embrace a poetcore life.
A Little More Poetry, Please
The best takeaway from this post is that you do not need to become an actual poet to have a poetcore life.
And you definitely don’t need to start wearing black turtlenecks and looking emotional in cafes.
Poetcore, to me, is simply an excuse to be more observant and sentimental about your life through the power of words and personal touches.
So, read beautiful things, collect words, write thoughts down before they disappear, and wander around bookstores.
Keep flowers from your walks, look out the window when it rains, and have conversations that last longer than you planned.
Basically, stop treating the tiny things as background scenery when they are so clearly meant to be the whole poem.
I hope these tips help you channel your main character energy, feel more connected to yourself, and nurture a pretty inner world.
Pin this post before you leave so you can read it again later. Thank you!
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