Hilary Corke's "After I Wake Up" is written in free verse. The difference between free verse and blank verse is that, while neither relies upon rhyme to lend cohesion to a poem, blank verse will adhere to a set meter. Blank verse will usually use iambic pentameter, where each line has five stressed beats, called "feet."

In this poem, the lines vary in length. Corke uses repetition, rather than rhyme scheme or set meter, to give his poem a shape. The word "gentlemen" is repeated, usually on its own line, which gives the sense that the speaker is calming a crowd or trying to continually draw attention back to himself. This is particularly indicated near the beginning of the poem, where the word "gentlemen" is repeated twice in succession.

The poem is not completely free from the structures of verse poetry. While it does not actually adhere to iambic pentameter and the lines have different numbers of beats, they are mostly around the same length on the page, with the exceptions of those which are simply one word. Corke is concerned with how his poem looks to the reader, and some of the lines do have the five stressed syllables typical of, for example, Shakespearean lines—for example:

I dream of that awhile, then sick at heart

You can hear the stresses on this line as follows:

I DREAM of THAT aWHILE, then SICK at HEART