You can read about the Drabble here.
You can read a brilliant prize-winning Drabble by Juliet Wilson here on her Crafty Green Poet site.Tuesday 7 November 2023
New Form (39): The Drabble
Tuesday 3 January 2023
New Forms (38): The Bob and Wheel
You can read about this poetic form here on Marian Christie's blog.
I should add that this is 'new-to-me' form as it has old roots.
Friday 4 November 2022
New Forms (37): Kintsugi Poems
Kintsugi poems. I became aware of these thanks to a poem, 'Menu', by Geoffrey Winch in Reach Poetry #287.
Thursday 26 May 2022
New Forms (36): The Essence Poem
Monday 22 February 2021
New Forms (35): The Duplex
Monday 11 January 2021
New Forms (34): Minison
I have just encountered the Minison Project here, thanks to Trish Hopkinson's NO FEE Submission call page.
Do take a look at this brief form, described as 'Shakespeare's Sonnet Reimagined'.
Saturday 24 October 2020
New Forms (33): Roseate Sonnet
Details of the Roseate Sonnet can be found here. This Indian variation on European Sonnet forms was developed by Dr. A.V. Koshy in December 2012.
Monday 28 September 2020
New Forms (32): The haiflu
#haiflu
The haiflu is taking off big time, and although I am presenting it as a new form, it is has really become a community enterprise initiated by Liz Torc, revolving around lockdown Haiku and photographs. We are being invited to post any we write online with a hashtag so that others can find them.
Thursday 16 July 2020
Thursday 18 June 2020
New Forms (30): the Suffolk Cando
'... so how did it get so green?' Dean Parkin (Suffolk Cando) |
Have you heard of the Suffolk Cando? Poet, Dean Parkin invented the form for the Make, Do & Friends projects, organised by Suffolk Artlink and the Rural Coffee Caravan. He hopes it will help us to celebrate Suffolk Day on 21 June.
Dean describes the Suffolk Cando as a cross between a limerick and a haiku, with added Suffolk dialect thrown in. The form usually has four lines. It can include rhymes 'here and there'.
One line is usually a question, and while the inventor of the form would like to encourage a bit of 'Suffolk', he adds that 'any old dialect would do (or speech).'
The form will be premiered tomorrow on Radio Suffolk (UK) on Friday 19 June 2020 on the Lesley Dolphin show at 2.30pm.
Dean's examples:
SUDDENLY SUMMER
Early spring
everything budding
we've had no rain
so how did it get so green?
SUFFIN FOR NUFFIN
They say wos it all about?
Well, I dunt really noo.
You can do the hookey cookey
but just yew mind how yew gew.
Posted with Dean's permission.
Thursday 30 January 2020
Poetics (6): the Epigraph
Wednesday 30 January 2019
Sunday 4 February 2018
Tuesday 30 January 2018
Poetics (5): the Double dactyl
Thursday 30 November 2017
New Forms (27) and (28): The Octolune... and the Octoluneo
This new poetic form, which addresses or invokes the moon, was invented by Simon Zonenblick. If you click through to Simon's post and scroll down a little, you will also be able to read about the spin-off form, the Octoluneo.
You can find details of the Octolune on the Write Out Loud site here.
Alison Lock has included an Octolune in her new collection, Revealing the Odour of Earth (Calder Valley Poetry, 2017). Hannah Stone alludes to the poem in her review here on the Algebra of Owls site.
Friday 27 October 2017
New Forms (26): Newspaper Blackout Poems
See here.
Monday 2 October 2017
New Forms (25): The Golden Shovel
This not-quite golden (?peat) shovel is displayed in the Somerset Levels, having come from the China Clay Museum in Cornwall |
24 November 2017 news update: there is now an international Golden Shovel competition run by Roosevelt University for young people and international undergraduate students: details here.
I attended a poetry workshop and reading at the ¡Cornucopia! Alde Valley Festival on Saturday. One of the poems read out to us by Sue Wallace-Shaddad was in the Golden Shovel form. This was new to me. Its name immediately brought to mind not only Wordsworth's 'host of golden daffodils', but a diverse array of other 'golden' items, rules and concepts - the goose's golden eggs, the Golden Section, a golden handshake and so on.
The image that lodged most firmly in my mind was the 'Golden Marshalltown' trowel, the prized possession of an archaeologist, in The Golden Marshalltown: A Parable of the the Archaeology of the 1980s by Kent V. Flannery (American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 84, No. 2, June, 1982, 265-278): you can read about the article here.
I am still trying to work out the connection between the trowel and the shovel since both (like the pen: remember Heaney) can be used for digging.
Here are a few links to websites about the new poetry form...
- the poem by Terrance Hayes that gave the form its name.
- about Terrance Hayes, the creator of the form and about Gwendolyn Brooks, in whose honour the form was created.
- concerning the rules, as laid out by Robert Lee Brewer
- The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, edited by Dr. Peter Kahn , Ravi Shankar and Patricia Smith. About the volume's launch - here.
- 'Prayer' by Carolyn Oliver, a Golden Shovel poem using lines from Emily Dickinson, on the Frontier Poetry site.
- Poetry School review by Bridget Minamore of Seasonal Disturbances by Karen McCarthy Woolf (Carcanet). The review mentions the poet's Golden Shovel poems which feature in the book.
- Excellent advice and help from Peter Kahn and the Young Poets' Network - here.
Tuesday 19 September 2017
Resources (2): Martyn Crucefix on 14 Ways to Write an Ekphrastic Poem
Friday 26 May 2017
New Forms (24): The Cherita
- 'collecting dulse' [22/2017] has been published in The Cherita #3 (eBook 2017 vol i. Find Me) p.188...
Elgol, Skye shorelines |
Friday 17 February 2017
Poetics (4): Structure... Metaphor-to-Meaning
Monday 19 December 2016
New Forms (23): The Alternating Sonnet
Monday 7 November 2016
Monday 12 September 2016
Poetics (3): The Volta
I have mentioned the following published lecture before on this blog, but here are the details again as a reminder...
You Only Guide Me by Surprise: Poetry and the Dolphin's Turn Peter Sacks. The Judith Lee Stronach Memorial Lecture on the Teaching of Poetry, delivered on 7 May 2010 by Peter Sacks.
Saturday 10 September 2016
New Forms (21): Dizain
Thursday 4 August 2016
New Forms (20): Cinquerelle
Description of the form from Michael Newman.
CINQUERELLE
Breakers unfurl.
White onrush.
Children
Squeal.
© Michael Newman (used with permission)
Saturday 16 April 2016
New Forms (19): Tanka Prose (aka Tanka-Prose)
'... the best strawberries ...' Tim Gardiner in his piece, 'Between Storms' |
We helped to organise an Open Mic evening last night in Ipswich on the theme of 'Treasure'. During the course of the evening, Tim Gardiner introduced me to Tanka-Prose.
I have attempted Haibun (prose with Haiku) in the past, but had not heard of this alternative form. Tim explained a little about Tanka-Prose, which hasTanka rather than Haiku as a key element.
- 'Toward a Theory and Practice of Tanka-Prose' by Charles D. Tarlton, Oakland, California, USA (Haibun Today, Volume 5, Number 4, December 2011)
- Tim Gardiner's Haiku-Prose, 'Between Storms', published in Haibun Today, Volume 10, Number 1, March 2016
- 'The Elements of Tanka Prose' by Jeffrey Woodward
- Tanka Prose resources from Ray's Web (Ray Rasmussen)
Saturday 2 April 2016
Reference Post (2): Outlets for Formal Poetry
- A selection can be found here on the pages of 'A Selfish Poet' on Trish Hopkinson's site.
Thursday 20 August 2015
Literary Forms with Poetic Implications: (3) Mesostic poetry
For a definition of Mesostic, I turn to Wikipedia ...
Friday 15 May 2015
Resources (1): Useful Books (currently a list 'in progress'...)
ISBN-10: 1584650222 AND ISBN-13: 978-1584650225
A constant source of inspiration for many years.
(QQ Press in two parts, UK, £6 incl. of p&p. Rest of world postage on request).
Part 1, by Bernard, covers 37 forms.
Part 2, by Alan, is a glossary of literary and poetic terms.
Muse & Metre by Dr. H. Tulsi, ed. of Metverse Muse (India) - and Bernard M. Jackson
Moving Words, Forms of English Poetry by Derek Attridge (OUP).
242 Mirror Poems and Reflections by Dr Marc L. Latham (Kindle or print edition)
You Only Guide Me by Surprise: Poetry and the Dolphin's Turn by Peter Sacks.
The (brilliant) Judith Lee Stronach Memorial Lecture on the Teaching of Poetry, delivered on 7 May 2010 by Peter Sacks.
Thursday 7 May 2015
Literary Forms with Poetic Implications (2): Univocalism (plus Lipogram and Transgram)
... 'neglected by legends' ... Leanne Moden |
A Univocalism is a piece of writing, emanating from the constrained writing techniques of Oulipo. A Univocalism only allows for the use of one vowel, which may be repeated.
There is a rather good poem, keep my secret, in this style here on the Cambridgeshire NaPoWriMo site by Leanne Moden of Ten Years' Time.
- Univocalism listed on the Found Poetry Review (and here)
You might also enjoy reading about, or experimenting with, the Lipogram, a 'back formation' with a long history ...
- A Loquacious Location of Lipograms on the Phrontistery site (and here)
The Lipogram is joined by the Liponym and the Liponol.
You can read about the Transgram here.