Imagine you have just completed a written work, a marvellous profusion of prose or poetry. It has been well received and now, the next day, you are wanting to start something new. You sit in front of your notebook or laptop facing a blank page. A blank page empty as a salt flat. A boundless … Continue reading Word Drought
Writing poems
Rhyming Sonnets
A sonnet is an echo chamber of sounds, a closed form, allowing sound patterns to form consciously, or otherwise, in the reader’s mind. Rhyming is part of that sound-patterning, and rhymes can appear either at the end, the beginning or inside each line. Rhymes at the end of each line have characterised sonnets for centuries; … Continue reading Rhyming Sonnets
Sonnet or Not? – The fourteen-line Rondel
The sonnet form in poetry is characterized through several key features: it has a Turn or Volta, a rhyme scheme, regular line length often using pentameter, stanza breaks, and have fourteen lines. Right? Or only partly correct? Over centuries of use of this form, there have been many variants of the form tried by poets … Continue reading Sonnet or Not? – The fourteen-line Rondel
United Verses Limited – The business of writing
Welcome to your first day at work as a writer. A long time ago, I imagined that poets just wrote poems – that the work of a poet consisted of waiting for the muse to join them in some chic café and whisper mellifluous metaphors to them. Not correct. Oh, how wrong I was. Poets … Continue reading United Verses Limited – The business of writing
Lists, lists and more lists
List poems are a listing of various ideas elaborating a central conceit but without any transitional phrases. Sometimes the list loads and overloads descriptions piling up a backdrop until the last line comes as cathartic change. Examples of list poems are numerous across the ages, and include My November Guest by Robert Frost, The Lost … Continue reading Lists, lists and more lists
