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!