Today the group explored the poetic form known as Pantoum.

Although it originated in Malaysia in the fifteenth-century as a short folk poem, the modern pantoum is a poem of any length, composed of four-line stanzas in which the second and fourth lines of each stanza serve as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The last line of a pantoum is often the same as the first.

The exercise is to create a pantoum of 3 stanzas:

• Write six fairly short lines on the same subject (numbered 1-6).
• To make the first stanza, copy the first 4 lines from your list of 6.
  • line 1
  • line 2
  • line 3
  • line 4
• The second stanza has the following formula:
  • line 2
  • line 5
  • line 4
  • line 6
• The third stanza has the following formula:
  • line 5
  • line 3
  • line 6
  • line 1

The suggested subject for the exercise was Father’s Day, but you can choose any subject you like.

Have fun and see what you get!