It's day 10 of the poem a day challenge, and I had to come up with found poetry based on book spines. Somehow it ended up being about sex magic and mermaids singing Tom Jones songs...
Sunday 10 April 2016
Friday 17 April 2015
Ebony and Ivory is a Terrible Metaphor for Race Relations
This is from my first novel 'The Cybermancer Presents'. Two characters are walking past Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, within a Grand Theft Auto-type videogame set in 1980s London:
'And that's why Britain doesn't care for the black man!' he concluded.
'But hold on,' said a voice from the audience. 'How can you say that? 'Ebony and Ivory' was number one for seven weeks! They still play it on the radio. And that was all about racial harmony. It was even banned in South Africa because of its message of inclusion. How can you say Britain doesn't care about race relations?'
'Ebony and Ivory? Say what?' He was getting into his stride now. 'Have you ever seen a piano keyboard? I mean, have you ever really looked at it? What do we know about the black keys? They're in the minority and they're standing at the back. They have no opportunities compared to the whites. You know what you get if you're a black key? A pentatonic scale. Five notes. That's it. None of the fancy-arsed semitone intervals the white notes get. Oh no. You know how many chords the black notes can make? Two. An F sharp and an E flat minor. Two chords. That's it. They're not even in the same key! We don't even have keys. You need seven notes for that and we only have five. You know what you get if you're white? A whole octave. That's right, a whole octave that you and your white buddies can play around in to your heart's content. That's enough for three major chords, three minors, and a diminished. You know what diminished means to a black man? A reduced responsibility defence in a murder trial because the CIA have filled him with crack! White notes have a whole octave of things they can do. Black notes can do almost nothing. And you know why? Because 'Ebony and Ivory' was written by a white man. Because the piano was invented by a white man. Why do kids learn in the key of C? It's not because it's easy. It's because it's white!'
'But what about accidentals?' said the man in the crowd. 'You seem to know a bit about music. You can't play something in the key of E flat or whatever until you use both black and white.'
'There are seven notes in a key,' said the speaker again. 'There can never be equality. At best it's four of one and three of the other, with the three oppressed by the four and resenting them. The white notes sound good on their own, the black notes sound good on their own, but if you mix them up and you don't know what you're doing, you get discord.' He ended with another rhetorical flourish. 'And that's what we've got in Britain today, folks – discord!' He bowed to a smattering of applause. This guy was more interesting than the usual Christian nutters who turned up. He was a showman. And the name of the game was entertainment. That was what politics was all about. Even the US president was an actor.
Ram and Raffles looked at each other and walked on. Interesting guy. Ram privately agreed with the speaker. He thought that a zebra crossing would have been a better metaphor. It doesn't matter if you're black or white. You still get alternately stepped on or run over your whole life and you get no opportunity to do anything about it.
Tuesday 9 September 2014
Poetry Rivals & Beyond
Everything
changed when I won the Poetry Rivals competition.
I had
been writing for about 20 years by that point, but had done nothing
with it. On my own, I probably wouldn't have done. My daughter saw
the competition online and talked me into entering. I never thought I
had a chance.
My
life at this point was in something of a slump. I'd come to Swindon
for a job which no longer existed. I'm bipolar, prone to depression
and unemployment was not kind to me. Now I was stuck here and
couldn't afford to leave. My marriage was over. I used to work as an
IT consultant in places like Hong Kong, Australia and the City of
London. Now I watched the same Top Gear on Dave three times a day and
only left the house when I had to. I don't drive and I'm not a fan of
cars. I think I found the repetition comforting.
And
then I got invited to the final of the first Poetry Rivals Slam
Championship. I was stunned by this. I didn't think I had a chance –
I'd stopped thinking of myself as the sort of person who wins things
– but I'd give it a go. I managed to talk my Housing Association
into paying for the trip all the way to Peterborough. There's a sign
right there how far my horizons had shrunk.
I was
incredibly nervous when I was doing my Money God poem. I'm not
normally the nervous type: I did amateur dramatics for a few years as
a young man and I'd given any number of corporate presentations, but
usually on nice safe unemotional subjects like getting a computer
system to recognise changes in tax laws. This was very different.
This was me, competing with the top 50 poets from the competition,
having to interpret my own words and express them to a panel of
judges made up of proper qualified poets. This wasn't like handing a
mate a piece of paper and saying 'check this out – I just wrote
it'. It wasn't like putting something up on Facebook. I'm not even
sure what it was like. I have no frame of reference. It felt so
personal. I don't think I'd ever said 'this is me – tell me if I'm
any good' before.
The
compere of the night said that my intensity was such that he feared
for me, but it was really just nerves, a newly shy man thrust into a
spotlight and putting his own words up for approval. It was probably
some kind of public breakdown. I was pretty much terrified. I
remember shouting.
Somehow,
though, I'd done something right and I won. I won! This was something
I'd genuinely not expected. Writing was something I'd done for 20
years, but so was music, and they were both just pleasant
recreational activities, things I would do when I was away from home
in a hotel room somewhere in Asia. They were both just hobbies. It
never occurred to me I might be good at them. They were ways to feel
better about myself, ways to think 'yeah, OK, I've got a boring job
but at least I have some cool pastimes'. This was more about the
music than the poetry, of course. Poetry has not been cool for a long
time. Poetry is the anti-cool. It's a way of rejecting everything
that cool implies. Set it to music, of course, and things change...
And
now I had a publishing contract. Wow. Never saw that one coming. It
wasn't like I had a book or anything. What I had was a 100 page Word
document euphemistically called 'Complete Works' that had somehow
survived all the challenges of evolving technology. It started off as
a word processor document on my old Atari 520 when I was still living
with my parents, then laboriously copied word for word to my first
PC. It had migrated, constantly growing, as it went from hard drive
to floppy disk to USB stick, finally ending up in the email account
of my editor, Lindsay Evans.
It was
when we were putting the book together that I realised how
euphemistic my 'complete works' filename actually was. There was
stuff everywhere. By the time Lindsay had sent me a formatted draft
of what she had, I'd found more. Or written more. Probably about a
third of what ended up in the final version of the book was written
in the six months between winning the contest and publishing
'Reflections from a Broken Mirror'.
I was
starting to think of writing as my job. I had a publisher and
everything. I got involved with a local poetry group: I was even
their treasurer at one point. It didn't last, but that was not for
reasons related to poetry. I just got sick of the politics. Twenty
years earlier, I'd given up amateur dramatics for the same reason.
But I
carried on writing. I went through Wikipedia's list of poetic forms
and attempted all those that interested me (some examples are here). I wrote a series of
articles on poetry (available here) for Wise Badger, a now-defunct webzine. In a
particularly bleak period, I was even poet-in-residence for Walford
Web, an EastEnders fan site (I am no longer a fan). I was involved
with a Facebook group that would suggest themes to respond to
artistically, and many of the poems for my second collection
('Knitting Orang Utans') were inspired in this way.
I
stuck with the poetry for about 18 months, I guess. I'm still writing
verse and my third collection 'Et Cetera (And Other Similar Things)'
is almost ready to publish. But I don't think of my job as 'poet' any
more.
I had
discovered prose.
In
November 2011, I tried NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month - a separate blogpost on my first NaNoWriMo is available here)
for the first time, and I was hooked. There's a target of 50,000
words to write for the month, which equates to 1,667 words per day.
This is about 3 sides of A4. It's not a big deal.
So I
tried that, by the end of the month I had 80,000 words, and a few
months later, I had my first novel ('The Cybermancer Presents',
weighing in at 108,000 words). It wasn't poetry, but I still maintain
it was the confidence in my writing that came from winning the
competition that let me believe I could do it. It had always been one
of those 'wouldn't it be nice if...' things before.
To be
honest, I didn't really believe I could fill out a story to 50,000
words. I was a poet / songwriter. I wasn't used to writing in bulk.
Even the songs that went on for 11 minutes were only a few sides of
A4. So I kind of cheated a bit. I came up with the idea of having
players trapped in a videogame, fighting from game to game, and each
game would be a different genre, so they could go from sci fi to
fantasy, etc. Then I'd only have to write a series of vignettes about
a consistent cast of characters. Cunning, eh? I'd fill the 50,000
words in no time.
What
I'd not considered is how long a story takes to tell. By the time I'd
done the first level (a fantasy role playing game), I'd written
30,000 words. I looked at the list of the dozens of games I wanted to
include and scaled things back a bit. For that novel, at least. I've
written three more since in the Cybermancer Chronicles, and there are
at least four more to come.
To
paraphrase a line from The Commitments, I'm happier as an unemployed
writer than an unemployed IT consultant. I would define myself as a
writer now. It's the job I feel most passion for, the one I spend the
most time doing and it neatly encompasses poems, novels and songs, so
I don't have to commit myself to anything. I wouldn't say I was a
successful writer, because that's usually a function of sales and I'm
terrible at marketing, but it's what I do, whether anyone wants me to
or not.
Scribo
ergo sum. I write therefore I am.
If
winning Poetry Rivals taught me anything, it taught me that.
My books are available here. For Kindle versions, please select from the 'Links' section.
Monday 29 April 2013
Guides to Writing Poetry
A friend of mine was recently doing some research on poetry and I remembered I'd written some guides for the now sadly defunct Wise Badger website. These are here. There are sections on rhythm, ballads, villanelles and cinquains.
1. A Guide To Poetic Rhythm
Being a musician, I tend to think of this in terms of drum patterns, with a kick drum for the unstressed beats and a snare for the stressed ones. If it helps you to think of it in Morse code, dots can be unstressed syllables and dashes stressed ones. So this rhythm is :
1. A Guide To Poetic Rhythm
Poetry
has much in common with music. It is soothing to the ear, if that is
its intent. It can stir the passions. It can alter your mood
instantly. Music is essentially a combination of pitch, rhythm,
meaning and the shape of the sound. Poetry has all these elements but
pitch.
Because
of this, the rhythm and the shape of the sound need to be more
interesting for a poem to be successful. The need for meaning depends
on the style of the poem. People like Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll and
Wendy Cope did without it on occasion.
I
am not going to go into all the details of what differentiates a
trochee from an iamb from an anapest. These are just technical terms
for the type of rhythm a poem possesses, but anyone interested in a
list of the jargon can find it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_%28prosody%29.
What I am going to do is give you some ideas how to use them.
The
basic unit of measurement in poetry is a 'foot'. The 'metre', the
equivalent of the time signature in music, is made up of the type of
foot and the number of them per line. The 'iambic pentameter' you
might have heard from school just means there are five 'iambs' (an
unstressed beat followed by a stressed one) per line.
So
what are stressed and unstressed beats? These are the syllables that
make up your words. Some are stressed and some aren't. Let's take the
start of Shakespeare's most famous sonnet as an example:
Shall
I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou
art more lovely and more temperate.
There
is a recognisable rhythm to these words. All the way, it is an
unstressed beat followed by a stressed one (the 'iamb') and there are
five of them per line. If the stressed syllables are emboldened and
the unstressed ones are not, we get the following:
Shall
I
compare
thee to
a Summer's
day?
Thou
art
more lovely
and
more temperate.
Being a musician, I tend to think of this in terms of drum patterns, with a kick drum for the unstressed beats and a snare for the stressed ones. If it helps you to think of it in Morse code, dots can be unstressed syllables and dashes stressed ones. So this rhythm is :
.
- . - . - . - . -
As
a rule of thumb, the key for rhythm in poetry, as it is in music, is
consistency. Once a rhythmic pattern has been established, the poem
is often stronger for adhering to it. This is more important when
writing lyrics than poems, to be honest. There are times when you
would want to change metre for effect. For example, this limerick:
There
once was a bard from Japan
Whose
limericks never would scan.
When
told it was so,
He
replied, "Yes, I know,
But
I always try to fit as many words into the last line as I possibly
can.
But
the basic rhythm is as follows:
.-.
.-. .-
.-.
.-. .-
.-.
.-
.-.
.-
.-.
.-. .-
This
is the standard limerick metre. It is not enough to get the number of
syllables right. They also have to be the right type of syllables.
What
I find helpful is to know, when I'm writing a poem, what the
underlying rhythm is. Generally, once I've got the the first two
lines, it tells me enough about the metre and rhyme scheme to
continue.
Let's
write a quick couplet as an example:
Feel
the rhythm in your feet
This
is as follows: -. -.
-. -
So
we need a similar rhythm for the second line. How about ''the poem's
heart is the poem's beat'? This is .-.
-.. -. -
There
were a couple of extra unstressed beats in that, but that's fine.
That often happens when a drummer is playing, and drummers don't know
much but they do know rhythm! It's just a couple of extra beats and
that makes the poem more interesting. The important thing is that the
stressed beats (the snare drum equivalent) are in the right place.
This
also works because the additional unstressed beats (the opening 'the'
and the 'is the') were short syllables. Some take longer to say than
others. 'Heart' for example, is a word to luxuriate over. It's always
a good idea to read your poems over a beat – fingers snapping,
hands clapping, the slapping of your thigh if you're getting into a
country rhythm, etc. This ensures that everything is in the right
place. Regional variations of pronunciation should be taken into
account. I'm a Londoner, so 'bath' is pronounced 'barf'. Were I from
somewhere more Northern, if might be 'baff'. This is the difference
between a long syllable and a short one.
There
are poems to be recited aloud, and poems to be read on the page. Bear
in mind when writing that repetition of rhythm gives the reader more
of a chance to understand what's going on. However, like progressive
rock music, only complexity can satisfy a more discerning reader.
Like so many things, the key is to know your audience.
2. How
To Write a Poetic Ballad
There
is probably no word that appeals to me as a poet while simultaneously
repelling me as a musician as much as 'ballad' does. As a musician,
it conjures up images of schmaltzy, sentimental, over-emoted slow
tempo songs about love. Perhaps uniquely, putting the word 'power' in
front of it doesn't make things better at all. As a poet, however,
'ballad' reminds me of some wonderful poems, a continuous tradition
that goes back to the 13th
century and was itself influenced by earlier works such as Beowulf.
To most people, a ballad is just a song you can slow dance to. But
that definition has only been the musical one, and is only about a
hundred years old. So what is a ballad in poetical terms?
As
you might expect from something that has been going on for hundreds
of years with only poetic fashion to regulate it, there are
conventions rather than rules. Most ballads tend to be made of
quatrains (four line stanzas), although the likes of Oscar Wilde
subverted this with 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol', which had six line
stanzas. Most ballads in Europe follow a pattern of alternating lines
of tetrameter (four beats to the line) and trimeter (three beats) but
in places like Spain, the tradition was more for eight beats. The
tetrameter / trimeter structure was so that ballads could be sung
over any number of folk tunes.
One
thing that seems to be consistent with ballads everywhere, though, is
that they have a narrative. They tell a story. This story can be
whatever you like: comic, tragic, religious, romantic. There aren't
really any bounds. The alternating lines tend to rhyme, although even
that is not a rule. Spain, breaking with tradition, used consonance
(like alliteration, except the repeated consonant is not at the start
of the word). Ballads also tend to be long and detailed. Some can
have dozens of stanzas. They are more concerned with telling a story
than the sort of images that could be savoured in a shorter poem. If,
say, a haiku is a watercolour, and a limerick is a seaside postcard,
a ballad may well be a movie.
I
would love to tell you a story as an example of what I mean. To be
honest, it was my wife's birthday last night, I'm still hungover and
coming up with a new story is beyond my current powers! But I am
someone who likes fairy tales in space, so I'm going to have a go at
writing a ballad based on some scenes from the Star Wars movies.
I'm
going to follow the more common European traditions and use four line
stanzas. I will use the standard 'ballad metre' of iambic tetrameter
followed by iambic trimeter ('te TUM te TUM te TUM te TUM' followed
by 'te TUM te TUM te TUM').
First
we should set the scene:
A
long, long time ago,
In
a galaxy far away,
A
young heroic farmboy prince
Was
bored of baling hay.
Welcome,
Luke Skywalker! You are now the hero of this ballad. Many ballads
tell the tale of a character, often a doomed one. And Luke did have
his moments of peril.
His
name was Luke, his hair was blond,
Tattooine
was his world.
There
wasn't much to do at night
With
two suns and no girls.
Eagle-eyed
readers will spot that I borrowed the last line from Blue Harvest,
the Family Guy special on Star Wars. But this is actually in the
ballad tradition. There is some heated debate by experts as to
whether ballads were even written by one person or came from a whole
community, like a football chant. But even those who believe they
were written by one person agree that they were written for and often
based on the community. Tiny Scottish villages have a whole heritage
of traditional ballads just based on their history, which battles
they fought, etc.
But
back to our ballad. We know a little about Luke now. A typical role
playing character, basically, a humble innocent unaware of his
destiny but itching for more. What happens next? Well, the thing that
really rocked his world was the arrival of the droids, R2D2 and C3PO.
They were pivotal characters, the only ones to appear in all six
movies, and responsible for much of the humour of the franchise. So
how do we get them into the ballad?
The
pedal bin and golden man,
As
camp as Larry Grayson,
Ended
up with Uncle Owen,
Luke's
closest relation.
I
don't like the last line, to be honest, but like rap, many
traditional ballads took some terrible liberties with rhymes and
there are many examples of words that are seemingly included just
because they fit, so I think I'm consistent with the form.
I
have introduced the droids by nicknames because I think they give you
an affinity with a character. It makes you feel you know them better,
especially if it's the sort of affectionate mocking you get among
friends. And R2D2 does
look like a pedal bin.
So
poor Luke is still stuck, having to wait to go to space academy until
after the harvest, not understanding it's probably for his own good
and angry with those who protect him. To make this seem more
immediate, to try and make the reader empathise more, I'm going to
write this in the present tense. Also, 'wanted' would have been too
many syllables:
He
wants to join the rebels but
He's
still stuck on the farm.
Uncle
Owen keeps him there
To
keep him out of harm.
And
then the Merlin of the piece arrives, the almost immortal Obi Wan
Kenobi. R2D2 had escaped and went looking for him in the desert. The
force is strong with that one:
The
pedal bin had slipped a cog
And
flew across the sand.
Luke
went to investigate
But
ran into a band
Of
sand people. Thankfully,
Obi
Wan attacked.
He
drove them off and rescued Luke
And
took him to his shack.
This
technique of spreading a sentence across stanzas is called
'enjambment' and can be effective in building tension during passages
with action in them. It might not be something found in the more
traditional ballads, but the ballad form is still evolving, still
being used by a new generation of poets. This is my first ballad and
I'm having a ball.
But
back to Luke. He now discovers his father was a Jedi, gets given a
light sabre and instantly believes everything a complete stranger
tells him about a religion he's never heard of. But that makes him
sound less heroic, so we'll leave it out.
Obi
Wan dressed like a monk
And
sounded like dementia.
But
Luke had heard his destiny
And
lusted for adventure.
These
are not the sort of rhymes I use in any other poetry I write. But I
think they fit with a ballad. There is something declamatory about
them. Like the limerick, the ballad has its own rhythm that lends
itself to immodest rhyming, at least in this metre and style.
It's
probably time to give R2D2 his real name. At this point, he plays the
hologram he had refused to show Luke. To continue with our ballad:
R2D2
(pedal bin)
Had
played a DVD:
On
holographic desert air
Was
Princess Leia's plea.
I
reversed the usual order of the last two lines to put it into the
style of Yoda, another character in the Star Wars universe. The small
green syntactically challenged Jedi, he is.
'Help
me please, oh Obi Wan,
The
hour of need is nigh.
Meet
me here in Alderan
Before
we all must die'.
'Die'
is always a good word to end a line with. Everything about it screams
finality.
The
impassioned speech of the princess brings a bit of melodrama to the
proceedings, which was another staple of the ballad tradition. At a
time before radio, TV, videogames, etc, and where there was no
facility for playing music without playing the instruments, ballads
were the soap opera of their day. This is the reason so many
traditional songs are quite grisly in their depiction of murders,
executions and the like. One way or another, the dark side has always
entertained us.
And
so have ballads. And they still do. I've been having a great time
writing this. You should try it. Pick a story you like and rewrite it
in verse. Find inspiration in the newspapers. Writing just this bit
has got me thinking about other poems I want to write. Maybe there is
even a place for an epic ballad saga based on the lives of the
Skywalkers, their droids and all the space folk they meet on their
many adventures through the galaxies.
But
it is not here. I realise now that there is no way I would be able to
write the whole of Star Wars in ballad form for this article, so I'll
stop right now. I don't know why I thought I'd be able to. I blame
Old Speckled Hen.
Hopefully
this has given you some ideas as to what a ballad is and how to write
one. They're fun to do and like any creative act, writing a ballad
opens up neural pathways that can keep the brain working, prolonging
active life.
But
for those of you who have somehow avoided seeing Star Wars and want
to know what happens, this is the whole saga in abridged ballad form:
The
Jedi only fight for good,
The
Empire do not.
Things
explode, the tale gets told,
The
good guys end on top.
3 How To Write a Villanelle
The
villanelle is arguably the poetic form that has the most 'rules'. The
poem must be exactly 19 lines long, 5 tercets (3 line stanzas)
followed by a quatrain (a 4 line stanza). Of these 19 lines, 8 of
them are the same 2 lines repeated 4 times each. The first line of
the first stanza becomes the last line of the second and fourth
stanzas, and the third line of the sixth. The third line of the first
stanza becomes the last line of the third and fifth stanzas and the
fourth line of the sixth. Only 2 rhymes are allowed.
Villanelles
tend to be about loss, but there are examples of villanelles on all
sorts of subjects. 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night' (below) by
Dylan Thomas, written to his dying father, is probably the most
famous one. But give it time - one day, somebody might be writing an
article like this about your poem! You just have to write it...
Do
not go gentle into that good night,
Old
age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage,
rage against the dying of the light.
Though
wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because
their words had forked no lightning they
Do
not go gentle into that good night.
Good
men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their
frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage,
rage against the dying of the light.
Wild
men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And
learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do
not go gentle into that good night.
Grave
men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind
eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage,
rage against the dying of the light.
And
you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse,
bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do
not go gentle into that good night.
Rage,
rage against the dying of the light.
What
makes the villanelle so tricky to write is the need to have the
repeated lines and the fact that only two rhymes are allowed (words
that rhyme with 'night' and those that rhyme with 'day'). For this
reason, at the planning stage (and you will
need
one),
it is important to come up with lines that you don't mind hearing
over and over again, and also to make sure that there are sufficient
rhymes for them. Don't be shy about using a rhyming dictionary if
necessary – there are lots of them available online. Also, be
creative with other writing aids – I used a spreadsheet to write my
villanelle. It seemed the best way to insist that rhymes got repeated
in the right places. It also meant that changes to the repeated lines
were instantly reflected in the rest of the poem. Bear in mind also
that, as the first line of the first stanza becomes the last line of
two others, it needs to be a line that stands on its own.
When
I reread Thomas' poem, I wanted to write a villanelle of my own. I
booted up Excel instead of Word and got the repeated lines in the
right places. It is very easy to link one cell to another just by
entering '=' and the reference for the cell you want to copy. That
got the structure in place. I tried several repeated lines before
deciding on 'This is it. This is the end' and 'And now I've lost a
lover and a friend'. I had already decided I wanted to write about
the end of a relationship, these lines would not be overly jarring if
repeated frequently, 'end' has lots of rhyming words, and the
repeated 'this is' was a deliberate echo of Thomas' repeated 'rage'
in his villanelle.
So
now I had the structure and the repeated lines in place, I just had
to flesh it out. The first stanza was almost finished – as it
contained both repeated lines, it was only the middle line that was
needed, and at this stage it didn't need to rhyme with anything. I
tried a few lines and ended up with 'For many years, I've tried to
make you stay'. It fitted nicely between the two lines I already had
and like 'end', 'stay' has many rhymes.
And
that basically was it! I just tried new lines that fit, one stanza at
a time. Because I already had the structure and repetitions
formalised in Excel, it was impossible to get it wrong.
I
was quite pleased with the final poem. This is as follows:
This is
it. This is the end.
For
many years, I've tried to make you stay
And now
I've lost a lover and a friend.
I've
made mistakes. I've tried to make amends
And in
return, you tried to make me pay.
This is
it. This is the end.
I've
changed so much and no more can I bend:
I think
my whole persona's gone astray
And now
I've lost a lover and a friend.
My love
for you was strong: it did ascend
To
heaven, but now it's gone away.
This is
it. This is the end.
I do
not mean to anger or offend
But you
and I are now as night and day
And now
I've lost a lover and a friend.
For too
long we've attempted to pretend
That
everything could carry on OK.
This is
it. This is the end
And
now I've lost a lover and a friend.
The
villanelle can be a lot of fun to write, and like anything difficult,
you really feel like you've accomplished something when it does all
work out. Happy writing!
4 - How To Write a Cinquain
The
cinquain is an interesting poetic form. Like the haiku and tanka, on
which it is based, it emphasises economy and adherence to syllabic
rules. The cinquain was invented by American poet Adelaide Crapsey in
a posthumous collection from 1915, It derives its name from the five
line structure of the basic form.
There
are many types of cinquain to choose from, but they all basically
follow the same pattern – one line has (say) two syllables, the
next four, the next six, etc, The number of syllables alters from
line to line in accordance with the rules of the individual form.
A
good example of Mrs Crapsey's cinquains is 'November Night':
Listen...
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall
This
basic cinquain follows a 2-4-6-8-2 syllable pattern. But we're not
going to do a basic one. That would be boring. We're going to push
the boat out and write a 'garland cinquain', which seems to be the
hardest of all. A man's reach must exceed his grasp, to quote Robert
Browning.
The
garland cinquain is made up of six separate cinquains, the sixth one
derived from the previous five. So the first line of the sixth one
comes from the first line of the first, the second line of the sixth
from the second line of the second and so forth.
Like
the villanelle, a planning process is useful. It is better to write
the sixth cinquain first and base the earlier ones around it.
How
do we do that then? Well, a good place to start would be to come up
with a theme. This is usually the hard part. I find it somewhat
daunting to sit down with a blank page and every subject in the world
as an option. I work better with parameters. Maybe you do too. So as
I'm writing this for Wise Badger, I'm going to make this poem about
the wisdom of badgers.
The
first line of the last cinquain has to have two syllables. By a
fortunate coincidence, 'badgers' has two syllables. So I'm going to
make that my first line. We have established a cast of characters.
What can we say about the badgers?
Well,
we want to emphasise their wisdom, and we have to do it in four
syllables. So how about 'wiser than owls'?
The
next line needs to be six syllables long. The previous line was
unexpected: owls are generally considered rather wise. So we need to
justify this statement. What makes badgers wiser than owls? I needed
some time with Wikipedia to work this out, but the badger has some
advantages over the owl. For one thing, a badger can eat an owl but
an owl cannot eat a badger. So I suggest: 'can pluck birds from the
trees'.
The
following line is eight syllables long. So far, we have: 'badgers /
wiser than owls / can pluck birds from the trees'. What can the owl
do instead? Not much, really. For such a wise bird, it lives mainly
on a diet of vermin. So let's reflect that. 'But owls can only chew
on rats' seems to sum this up. We need a two syllable line to finish
the sixth cinquain, so let's just add 'and voles'. We now have the
following:
Badgers,
Wiser than owls,
Wiser than owls,
Can
pluck birds from the trees
But
owls can only chew on rats
And
voles.
We're
on our way. It may not seem like we've done much, but we're actually
33% complete. We have written five lines, all of which will be
repeated, making ten in total, and the whole poem will be thirty
lines long.
The
first line of the first cinquain will be the first line of the sixth
one we just wrote. So it starts with 'badgers'. A good place to
start, given the subject matter. There are no rules that we need to
adhere to for the remaining lines, except for the syllable count. So
line two needs to have four syllables.
What
else do we know about badgers? They're white, black and grey in
colour. By another remarkable coincidence, 'white, black and grey'
would fill the four syllables we need quite nicely. So let's add
that.
Comparisons
often work well in poetry. What else is white, black and grey? An
elderly nun springs to mind. Also a well read newspaper. We need a
six syllable line, followed by an eight and a two. So I suggest:
'like an elderly nun / or a newspaper, smeared by thumbs / and time'.
That seems to work.
Cinquain
number one is therefore:
Badgers,
White,
black and grey,
Like
an elderly nun
Or
a newspaper, smeared by thumbs
And
time
Cinquain
number two needs to have 'wiser than owls' as its second line, but
no-one says the punctuation has to stay the same. I'm going to
rephrase it as a question and make the first line 'what are', so we
have 'what are / wiser than owls?'. As it's a question, we should
probably answer it. There are many things wiser than owls. At least
some humans, I would imagine. I've never understood why the owl was
considered wise when 'bird brained' is an insult. Who are some
famously wise humans? I don't want to get into whether Socrates was
wiser than Nietzsche, or Keats more wise than Shakespeare so I'll
limit myself to job descriptions. The following six and eight
syllable lines suggested themselves immediately but seemed to require
a more defiant statement. Luckily the two syllable line was
available.
Philosophers,
poets,
And,
believe it or not, badgers.
They
are.
Cinquain
two is now complete as follows:
What
are
Wiser
than owls?
Philosophers,
poets,
And,
believe it or not, badgers.
They
are.
Getting
into my stride now. Only another twelve lines to write and we've
finished this. It's already 60% complete.
The
previous line seems to require some explanation. We need to come up
with a way to justify the grouping together of badgers with the
loftiest ideals of the human psyche. Back to Wikipedia. One thing
that impressed me about the badger was that, in North America it
sometimes eats coyotes, sometimes is eaten by them but has been seen
working co-operatively with the wolf-like creatures when they hunt.
This intrigued me.
The
only other constraint on this cinquain is that the third line must be
'can pluck birds from trees'. Hmmm.
How
about 'badgers / can run with wolves / can pluck birds from the
trees'. That showcases their occasionally co-operative natures and
their tree-climbing skills. The next line, the eight syllable one,
will probably need to start with 'and'. So how about 'and work with
species not their own / to hunt'.
The
third cinquain is now complete:
Badgers
Can
run with wolves
Can
pluck birds from the trees
And
work with species not their own
To
hunt
This
may not seem like a big deal. Humans hunt with dogs and horses. The
badger / coyote relationship seems a lot more democratiic though.
Could this be a sign of wisdom?
By
this time, I had got the rhythm stuck in my head and words were just
coming out that fit without much conscious thought. I was pleased
with this:
We
hunt
With
dog and horse
But
we dominate them
The
badgers just collaborate
Wisely
Then
I remembered that the fourth line had to be 'but owls can only chew
on rats'. I thought of the badger's omnivore status and came up with
the following:
The
gut
Of
a badger
Can
process many things
But
owls can only chew on rats.
Real
wise.
Another
badger skill, especially if you're a honey badger, is to shrug off
the venom from the snakes you eat. They have the resistance to toxins
of a beat poet. The honey badger has been described as 'the most
fearless animal in the world'. Its willingness to fight, and fight
dirty, is a staple of YouTube links around the world.
'Honey
/ badgers are brave' fits the requirements of the first two lines of
the fifth cinquain. They are natives of Africa and have eaten from
animals as wild as lions. Their taste for exotic meat could be
represented as 'fearless in their hunger / for more exotic fare than
mice / and voles'. The 'and voles' was required by the form.
So
now we have a finished Garland Cinquain. This is the final piece:
Badgers,
White,
black and grey,
Like
an elderly nun
Or
a newspaper, smeared by thumbs
And
time
What
are
Wiser
than owls?
Philosophers,
poets,
And,
believe it or not, badgers.
They
are.
Badgers
Can
run with wolves
Can
pluck birds from the trees
And
work with species not their own
To
hunt
The
gut
Of
a badger
Can
process many things
But
owls can only chew on rats.
Real
wise.
Honey
Badgers
are brave,
Fearless
in their hunger
For
more exotic fare than mice
And
voles.
Badgers,
Wiser than owls,
Wiser than owls,
Can
pluck birds from the trees
But
owls can only chew on rats
And
voles.
There
are other types of cinquain than the 2-4-6-8-2 format shown here. A
reverse cinquain goes 2-8-6-4-2. A mirror is a normal cinquain
followed by a reverse one. A butterfly cinquain goes
2-4-6-8-2-8-6-4-2. And a crown cinquain is five cinquains combined to
make a longer poem.
The
cinquain is an interesting exercise in writing. If you are writing
something in blank verse, where there are a specific number of
syllables on each line, writing some cinquains can get you into the
flow of counting beats. Like the haiku, it can be considered both an
end in itself and a means to other writing.
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