Collection
Acrostic poems for family and friends
Original acrostics on FRIEND, FRIENDSHIP, FAMILY, SISTER, BROTHER, GRANDMA and GRANDPA, each with a note on what makes it work.
Acrostic poems for the people you choose and the people you were given: friends, sisters, brothers, grandparents and the whole noisy family. Every poem here is original to this site, with a note on what makes it work, so you can borrow the approach as well as the lines.
On this page
FRIEND and FRIENDS
First to text when the news is bad,
Remembers how I take my coffee, and my grudges,
Is fine with silence on long drives,
Eats the last slice only after asking twice,
Never once said I told you so (and could have),
Drives over. Doesn't ask why.
The last line is the whole poem in six words. Everything above it is there to earn it.
Found a frog at recess,
Ran to show my friends.
It jumped on Mrs. Grant.
Everyone screamed.
Now the frog is famous,
Detention for three,
So worth it.
One line per beat of the story. Children find this easier than describing a friend, and it is funnier.
FRIENDSHIP
Forty-minute phone calls about nothing,
Rain-check dinners that still happen eventually,
Inside jokes nobody else is allowed to understand,
Easy quiet,
No scorekeeping,
Doors left unlocked for each other,
Shared playlists, unshared fries,
Home, in the shape of a person,
In any city, at any hour,
Picking up exactly where we left off.
Ten letters is a lot. Mixing two-word lines with long ones stops it feeling like a list, and the eighth line gives the poem its centre.
FAMILY
Five voices talking over each other at dinner,
Arguments about the thermostat,
Matching pajamas only one person wanted,
In-jokes older than the youngest cousin,
Leftovers in every size of container,
Yes, all of it, every time.
Five lines of chaos, one line of love. The Y line solves a hard letter by turning it into the answer to a question the poem never asks.
SISTER and BROTHER
Stole my sweaters, returned them stretched,
Invented a secret code we still use at forty,
Sat on the stairs with me the night of the phone call,
Tells Mom nothing and tells me everything,
Every photo of us, she's mid-laugh,
Rival, witness, best friend.
The third line brings in something serious without explaining it. Readers fill it in with their own history.
Built the fort, then charged admission,
Reached the top shelf for me and took a cookie as his fee,
Owes me twelve dollars from 2009,
Taught me to ride without training wheels, then laughed,
Has my back in any room with our uncle in it,
Eats like a bin truck, sleeps like a cat,
Really, truly, the worst. The best.
Six jokes and a two-sentence ending that contradicts itself. That contradiction is what siblings are.
GRANDMA and GRANDPA
Gardens in a sun hat older than my mother,
Radio always on, always arguing with it,
A cookie tin that never holds cookies,
Needles, wool, a scarf for everyone by November,
Dominoes on Sunday, no mercy shown,
Makes soup that fixes things soup should not be able to fix,
And still calls me “chick.”
Every line is a thing you could photograph. The last line is the one she will read twice.
Garage full of jars of screws, sorted by nothing,
Rolls out his jokes slowly, like a good bowler,
A pocketknife, a peppermint, a handkerchief,
Naps in the chair, “resting his eyes,”
Drove the same car for twenty-two years,
Pulls a coin from behind my ear, even now,
And I still pretend to be surprised.
The last two lines work as a pair: his trick, and your kindness in keeping it alive.
Making it about them, not about anyone
The test for any of these poems: could it be about someone else? If a line would fit any grandmother, cut it and replace it with one that only fits yours. “Always kind” fits anyone. “A cookie tin that never holds cookies” fits one kitchen.
Three sources of specific lines, in order of how well they work: things the person says, things they do over and over, and things they own. A line of their own speech in quotation marks is the fastest way to make a poem sound like them. For a longer look at the method, see name acrostic poems, which deals with the same problem for first names.
Questions
What is a good acrostic poem for a friend?
One made of shared history: the inside joke, the road trip, the night the car broke down. A friendship acrostic works when a stranger could not have written it. Spell FRIEND, their name, or a word only the two of you would understand.
How long should a FRIENDSHIP acrostic be?
FRIENDSHIP has ten letters, which is long enough that padding creeps in. Short lines help: a phrase per line rather than a sentence, as in the example on this page.
Can I write one poem for the whole family?
Yes. Spell FAMILY or your surname and give each line to a different person or a different family ritual. It makes a good centrepiece for a reunion or an anniversary card.
Are these poems free to use?
Yes. All of them were written for this site and can be used in cards, gifts, speeches and school work without attribution.