6 Cute Poetic Strategies You Should Try

How can we utilise the ‘cute’ in our writing? Ellora Sutton is teaching her Online course Gutsy Cute Studio this November gives us some of her top strategies

1. Whimsy

Think fairytales. Think gems and talking woodland critters. Nothing can go wrong here (so it’s all the more crushing when it does). When is a poem not a poem? When it’s a princess lost in the woods, duh.

Image credit: @sarahspcreates

2. Sweetness

Make the reader feel cute. Like you just want to look after them. They can trust you. You baked them a cake. No ulterior motive, honest…

Image credit: @busra-yaman

3. Godzilla the Cute

Cute is in the eye of the beholder. For instance, Godzilla is cute because he is lonely and needs a mother. (I could fix him.)

Image credit: @santonii (with edits)

4. Girlishness

And what does that mean to you? Gel pens and lip gloss and keys in your fist. Spin the bottle. Play sleepover games. Giggle, hysterically. Do you feel powerful or do you feel threatened? Yes.

Image credit: @dezjeff

5. Doe eyes

I am helpless and as a helpless thing I must also be harmless and artless and therefore you must pity me and be invested in my wellbeing, my quest: write a doe-eyed poem.

Image credit: @avia5

6. Cunning

Cute is an aesthetic strategy of manipulation. It relies on tricking its audience into thinking it’s helpless, and then—BAM! You’ve spent all your money on blind boxes. Just like the lyric ‘I’, really. The whimsy of fairytales often hides something sharper.

Image credit: @yari-emmanuel

If you would like to put some of these cute strategies into practise, Ellora is teaching her brand new course Gutsy Cute Studio this Autumn, starting on Monday 2 November. Find out more and book your place here.

Ellora Sutton is a poet and PhD student based in Hampshire. Her debut collection, Little Bitch (Verve, 2026), was described by Rachel Long as “sharp, tender, hilarious […] a marvel!” Her pamphlets include Artisanal Slush (Verve, 2023) and Antonyms for Burial (Fourteen Poems, 2022), which was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. She is the poetry reviewer for Mslexia, and is a Pamphlet Selector for the Poetry Book Society. Her work has been published in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, Magma, Berlin Lit etc. Ellora has been the poet-in-residence at both Jane Austen’s House and at Petersfield Museum and Art Gallery, and museums continue to shape her work – her PhD research explores the experience of museums as walkable urban spaces through contemporary poetry. Outside of poetry (and often in it), her interests include baking, tarot, ice cream, and Titanic (both the boat and the 1997 film). She has a weakness for arcade claw machine and is on a lifelong quest to find the perfect red lip.