# Poetry Book Template (5.5×8.5, Print-Ready) > A 5.5×8.5 poetry collection: contents by poem title, three section pages, one poem per page, stanzas that never split, hanging indents for long lines, step-indented lines, a prose poem and a poem that runs over two pages. Source: https://buildpdfs.com/templates/poetry-book-template Category: Digital Products A 5.5×8.5 poetry collection: contents by poem title, three section pages, one poem per page, stanzas that never split, hanging indents for long lines, step-indented lines, a prose poem and a poem that runs over two pages. ## What's included - 5.5×8.5 in trim with mirrored margins: 0.75 in inside, 0.6 in outside - Half title, title page, copyright, dedication and epigraph - Contents by poem title with real page numbers, grouped by section - Section pages on right-hand pages with a roman numeral and title - One poem per page, left-aligned; a stanza never splits across two pages - Hanging indent when a long line turns over - Step-indented lines, a justified prose poem and a two-page poem marked "continued" - Notes, acknowledgments ("earlier versions appeared in") and about the poet ## Sample content ### Salt and Lamplight ### Salt and Lamplight Poems Iris Halloran Independently published _Salt and Lamplight_ · Poems Copyright © 2026 Iris Halloran. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the author, except for short quotations in reviews. ISBN: \[paperback ISBN\] Independently published First edition, 2026\. Set in Crimson Pro and Cormorant Garamond. Trim size 5.5 × 8.5 in. for my mother, who kept the light on The sea does not explain itself. It comes back, and that is the whole of its argument. — from a notebook, 2019 #### Contents * I · Harbor * Low Tide, Six A.M. * My Mother Mends a Net * Inventory of the Boathouse * Gulls * The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter Writes Home * Brine * II · Inland * First Apartment * Night Bus * What the River Knows * Laundromat, Sunday * Staircase * Letter Not Sent * III · Weather * Forecast * Fog Comes In Over the Point * October * Salt and Lamplight * Notes * Acknowledgments * About the Poet I #### Harbor ##### Low Tide, Six A.M. The water has gone out to think. It leaves the harbor floor like a table after dinner: rope, a bottle, one blue shoe. My father walks the flats in boots and does not look for anything. That is the trick, he says. Then you find it. ##### My Mother Mends a Net She holds the needle like a pencil and writes the same short word a thousand times across the hole, until the hole forgets itself. I ask her what the word is. _Again_, she says. _It's always again._ Outside, the boats are knocking at the pier like guests who came too early and will not go home. ##### Inventory of the Boathouse Three oars, one of them broken and kept anyway because my grandfather carved his initials into the handle the summer he was twelve and nobody has had the heart to burn it. A tin of nails, mostly rust. A calendar from 1998, still on March, as if the year agreed to stop there and wait for us to come back for it. Paint in four shades of white. The smell of tar, which is the smell of every summer I was young in. One life jacket, child-sized. Mine. ##### Gulls They argue on the roof about bread, about wind, about who stood here first, and when the ferry horn goes they lift all at once, a sheet shaken out over the bed of the bay, and settle back, and argue. ##### The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter Writes Home Dear Mother, the city is loud in a way the sea never was. The sea was loud like a body breathing. The city is loud like a drawer of spoons. I have a room with one window that faces another window. A woman there waters a plant at nine and I have started to wait for her. I still wake at two, then four, to check a light that isn't mine. I lie there and count to twelve, the way the lamp went round. I tell the people here I'm from the coast and they say _how lovely_, and I do not know how to tell them that it was mostly work. continued ##### The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter Writes Home (continued) Brass to polish. Glass to clean. The log, in Father's hand, then yours, then, for one winter, mine: _wind SW, visibility good, all well._ All well, Mother. Visibility good. I keep a candle on the sill. Nobody here needs it. I light it anyway. ##### Brine Salt in the jar, salt on the step, salt in the seams of my coat a year after I moved away. Some things you leave. Some things you carry out in the lining, without knowing. II #### Inland ##### First Apartment A mattress, a lamp, a kettle. I own three forks. At night the radiator knocks like someone who has the wrong door and is too polite to leave. I let him in. We sit together until morning. ##### Night Bus Everyone on the night bus is going home or leaving it. The driver knows which. He doesn't say. A man in a work vest sleeps with his mouth open, his lunchbox held against his chest like something that might still be taken from him. The windows give us back our faces, tired and yellow. At my stop I say thank you and the driver lifts two fingers from the wheel, which is the most anyone has said to me all week. ##### What the River Knows The river behind the warehouses does not know it is a river. It thinks it is a long conversation that keeps being interrupted: by the weir, by the shopping cart, by the heron who stands in it for an hour and says nothing at all. It has been told it once reached the sea. It does not believe this. It has never once arrived anywhere. I walk beside it most evenings. We have that in common. I tell it about my day and it tells me about the rain three counties north, which is the only news it trusts. When I leave it keeps going. It doesn't mind. That is the thing I am learning from it, slowly, the way you learn anything worth having. ##### Laundromat, Sunday Twelve machines, and in each one somebody's week goes round: the shirt from the interview, the towel from the beach, a child's sock, alone, again. We do not speak. We fold. It is the closest thing I know to church. ##### Staircase Four floors up, and every step a smaller version of the day: the bag, the keys, the door that sticks, the quiet on the other side of it. ##### Letter Not Sent I wrote you a long letter about the river and the bus and the woman with the plant. I put it in a drawer. I think that some letters are for the one who writes them. I think this is one. III #### Weather ##### Forecast Rain by evening. Wind from the west. A chance of you calling, clearing later. ##### Fog Comes In Over the Point First the far islands go, then the buoy, then the bell on the buoy, which keeps ringing like a word you can't remember. Then the end of the pier. Then the pier. Then my own hand on the rail, and I stand inside the white and I am not afraid, and that surprises me most. ##### October The light goes yellow and lies down on the floor of the kitchen like an old dog that has decided, after years of thought, that this is the warmest place in the house. I step over it to make the tea. It is the season of keeping. Jars on the shelf. Wood by the door. Your coat, still on its hook. ##### Salt and Lamplight When I go home now the lamp is automatic. Nobody climbs the stairs. But my mother still leaves a light in the kitchen window, and the salt still finds the step, and when the boat comes round the point I see it before I see anything, and I know which way to steer. #### Notes _Low Tide, Six A.M._ is for my father, who said it first. _The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughter Writes Home_: the log entry in italics is copied from a real keeper's log, with the date removed. #### Acknowledgments Earlier versions of these poems appeared in _The Tidewater Review_ ("Gulls," "Brine"), _Harbor Lights Quarterly_ ("Night Bus") and _Small Rain_ ("Forecast"). My thanks to the editors. #### About the Poet Iris Halloran grew up in a fishing town on the north coast and now lives inland, near a river. _Salt and Lamplight_ is her first collection. ## Frequently asked questions ### How do you format a poetry book? Set the poems left-aligned, never justified (a prose poem is the one exception). Start each poem on a new page, keep each stanza on one page, and give long lines a hanging indent when they turn over. List the poems by title in the contents. These are common craft rules, not KDP rules. ### What trim size is best for a poetry book? 5.5×8.5 in and 5×8 in are the most common sizes. Pick the size that fits your longest line without many turnovers. 6×9 in suits collections with long lines. ### How much does it cost to self-publish a poetry book on KDP? A black-ink paperback of 24 to 110 pages at a regular trim such as 5.5×8.5 costs $2.30 to print on Amazon.com. KDP pays a 60% royalty at a list price of $9.99 or more, and 50% below that. So an 80-page collection earns about $3.69 a copy at $9.99, and about $2.20 at $8.99. KDP also gives a free ISBN for paperbacks. Source: KDP Help, checked November 2026. ### What margins does KDP need for a poetry book? KDP asks for an inside margin of 0.375 in for 24 to 150 pages and 0.5 in for 151 to 300 pages, and at least 0.25 in on the other sides. This template uses 0.75 in inside and 0.6 in outside. ### Can I upload my poems as a Word file? Yes. Paste your poems or upload a .docx, .txt or .md file. The AI keeps your line breaks and stanza breaks and sets each poem in this layout. ### Is this poetry book template free? Yes. You can edit the template for free and download a print-ready PDF. ## Related reading - [Self-publishing steps for a poetry collection](https://buildpdfs.com/guides/how-to-self-publish-a-book) [Use this template](https://buildpdfs.com/signup?templateId=poetry-book-template) — free, no credit card required.