To Build A Poem

Introduction

This was kicked off by some friends' opinions on poetic forms. Some detest rhyme and regular rhythm, while I am the opposite, although I do appreciate free-form poetry. Anything can be poetry, you just have to say that it is a poem. This article could be defined as a poem. It has no rhyme, rhythm, or, some might say, reason.

How Do We Build A Poem?

Maybe because I am not a very capable writer, I do have a preference for structured poetry, although my first attempt at a poem on Vocal was actually free-form. It was meant to be for a challenge, but I hadn't got the hang of entering challenges, so it didn't make it.

After this, there was a challenge for a sonnet, which I entered.

And following on from that, I tried a few more forms, such as Acrostic and Fibonacci, and from then on, I dipped into more and more forms.

I thought haiku was just a seventeen-syllable set of words in a 5-7-5 three-line format, but a friend of mine who lives in Japan corrected me on that. Even Dr John Cooper Clarke got it wrong, a haiku is not simple:

This was part of my poetry discovery journey.

I tried a villanelle, but got the first one wrong. I believe I am the best writer of villanelles, practising on Vocal and wrote this piece on how to write one with a video of writing one in semi-real-time:

I saw Pantoum on the Vocal poetry list and did a similar guide to that form, and I used the form for some anti-war poetry.

I liken building a formal poem to building a house or a machine. You need to make sure the structure is sound and keep to the rules.

Imagine if you built a house and didn't bother with foundations, bricks and concrete. It may turn out to be a piece of art, but it probably would not function as a house.

This site gives me a lot of poetic forms to try, and some, as yet, I have been unable to attempt, but it is a great resource to check out if you want to dip your toes into new forms.

Conclusion

I think I feel safer in a formal construct, but I also see it as a challenge. I still write free-form, but most of my poetry is formal, and I have anthologised a lot in self-published books on Amazon.

Thank you for reading, and I would love to hear your thoughts

I include a favourite poem of mine "I'm Being Followed by the Rolling Stones" by Murray Lachlan Young.