Forming form

An invitation to see what happens in the malleable walls of a poem’s structure.

Dear friends, 

I’m writing this as the Poetry Unbound week at the Omega Institute in New York state comes to an end. I changed my mind about a powerpoint presentation today, so I spent the morning time over a 5:30 am cup of tea (truthfully, three cups of tea) rearranging it.  

Anyway, yesterday I asked if everyone could write one-line responses to eight prompts. The prompts were on the idea of the “ordinary.” It’s a strange word, ordinary, as it may imply something mundane, not out-of-the-ordinary. But ordinary is unique to everyone: for some, ordinary is walking through a war zone on the way to work; for others, ordinary is four jobs and night school; for some people, ordinary is the stories they cannot tell; for others, ordinary is pressure. 

Photo by Annisa Hale

So ordinary’s not so ordinary when it’s shared. The prompts were asking people to take one experience of ordinary and respond with short-line responses: 

1. A line about something that’s become ordinary for you;

2. Where does this ordinary thing happen?

3. A line about time: When did you notice this ordinary thing had become ordinary?

4. Other surrounding events: what happens before it? what happens after it? 

5. What is a single feeling you have about this ordinary thing? 

6. What do you most wish to say about this ordinary thing? (You may wish to imagine yourself speaking to a person you think will listen: it could be yourself.)

7. A line showing us an object that’s associated with this ordinary;

8. Something about your body and this ordinary. 

These eight lines are each meant to invoke a simple line of poetry that just takes a line to say. 

I suppose I’m telling you about these prompts because I hope you might try responding. If you do, number them 1-8 (you’ll see why below) and perhaps edit them a little (consider whether the adjectives and adverbs are needed; consider if you’re trying to over-explain; simply let your lines show something).

Maybe your first line was: These days I wake before the alarm at five. 

Or maybe your fourth line was: I put tomorrow’s lunch in the fridge the night before. 

You get the idea. 

Anyway, now that you have eight delicious lines, arrange them in the order of a pantoum (remember that poem from Kay Ulanday Barrett that we used for Poetry Unbound last season? Their poem is a perfect example of a pantoum). A pantoum — a Malaysian form of poetry — takes eight lines and arranges them in this order; each line repeated, so in this version of a pantoum, the eight lines make a sixteen-line poem: 

Line 1
Line 2
Line 3
Line 4

Line 2
Line 5
Line 4
Line 6

Line 5
Line 7
Line 6
Line 8

Line 7
Line 3
Line 8
Line 1

Part of what happens in such a formulation is that your lines show up with new companions: the arrangement of them in the new order lays things alongside each other that may not have been previously considered. 

While original Malay pantoums (they’re spelt as pantoun in Malay) are strict in the perfect repetition of the line (and Kay Ulanday Barrett’s version is in such strict repetition), a lot of people write a punk pantoum; where the repetition may not be a perfect repetition, but rather something that is an echo of the first. So a line like “I put tomorrow’s lunch in the fridge the night before” could become “My lunch is cold, I let it unchill.” 

Forms of poetry (and really, every poem is in form; whether it’s free form, or a pantoum) offer an invitation to see what happens in the malleable walls of their structure. I love seeing what happens. Yesterday at Omega, people wrote a pantoum, then we explored how you could rewrite it, punk it up a little, and then we shared them.

If you have the time to write one, put one in the comments. Or, if you don’t, perhaps give us a single-line response to one of the eight prompts above. 

I’ll look forward to reading them,

PS: You’ve probably been listening in, but On Being’s new season started a few weeks ago. Already there have been rich interviews with Kate Bowler and Kerry Washington, with this week’s episode being a conversation between Krista and Reid Hoffman.

PPS: I used to lead Corrymeela, Ireland’s oldest peace organisation. I have some involvement still, and The Corrymeela Podcast started up again this week for six weeks. I interviewed the legendary (and soon to be ninety) Scottish writer Richard Holloway. 

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Poetry in the World

U.S.A.

Lexington Community Education | Lexington, MA 

I’m giving a talk about the “You” of poetry at Lexington Community Education Project on October 19th, 7pm. Details and registration here. 

Boston College | Chestnut Hill, MA

I’ll be giving a reading and a poetry workshop at the conference “The Art of Encounter: Catholic Writers on the Imagination” at Boston College on the 20th and 21st of October. Full details (and timetable) here.

Oklahoma City University | Oklahoma City, OK

I’ll be giving a poetry reading and lecture at Oklahoma City University on the 26th of October. Details and registration (the event is free) are here.