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.

New Forms (26): Newspaper Blackout Poems

As far as I can see, these are the same as erasure poems, except that you (only) use text from a newspaper.

See here. 

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.  

Resources (2): Martyn Crucefix on 14 Ways to Write an Ekphrastic Poem

Martyn Crucefix has written an excellent blog post here.

For the Rattle ekphrastic challenges see here. 

New Forms (24): The Cherita

The Cherita: a compact and pleasing 'short form', with a sense of narrative at its heart.

• 'collecting dulse' [22/2017] has been published in The Cherita #3 (eBook 2017 vol i. Find Me) p.188...

Elgol, Skye shorelines

 

Poetics (4): Structure... Metaphor-to-Meaning

For an excellent discourse on this fascinating subject, please see the post on the Structure and Surprise blog.