Share your pantoums here

Friday poetry round up

For anyone new to Poetry Pals, each Sunday I send out a ‘pen pal letter’ - a sort of love letter to poetry fans, which includes a poem and a writing prompt. Then each Friday we do a sharing post - a poetry round up. These two weekly posts are currently free (though of course I’d be very grateful for anyone who wants to support the time they take to produce - plus receive additional posts / encouragement to write 100 poems in a year and poetry events you can attend in your jammies!) I might be biased but this is one incredible feminist writing community. Come join us…

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Ok, this week seemed to cause a bit of a stir. Or was that just me ripping pages out of my notebook to start all over again fifty times?!

On Sunday

Nancy Hanna

sent us a couple of beautiful pantoums and the writing challenge was set. If you missed the post it’s well worth a read here.

I’m going to be honest, I struggled. And it did highlight a little something I’ve been ignoring for a while. I’ve slipped into a bit of a poetry form rut. I have a style of poetry I enjoy writing the most (and, looks sheepish, find the easiest) and although that is absolutely fine and I am definitely becoming more accomplished in that style over time, I haven’t been stretching myself.

I find some forms challenging. But challenging is good sometimes, isn’t it? In the right quantity, with the right support, at the right time. Challenging makes you ask new questions, of yourself and your words. It leads to expansion, flowering when you didn’t even realise that there were bulbs planted (is Spring on my mind, oh yes it is!) Some forms are made for some words and vice versa. And without knowing how to use these forms, well maybe these poems won’t ever shine like they could. Does this matter when we are just playing? It might not ‘matter’ but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to make our poetry shine. Sometimes. Are we tempted by something that glitters just beneath the surface? Of course we are. We are poets.

Not discounting that experimenting with form can be fun, is playful in itself. And hopefully you know me well enough by now to know that play is high on the agenda. As is feminism, did I mention? (ok, ok, not now, ha)

Anyway, so yes I got a little tangled up trying this new (to me) form. I tried digging out snippets of notes but they sat all awkward and angular on the page (not in a good way). I had the start of a poem which I then tried to put into a pantoum, again, no real success.

What did help was reading more pantoums (yep, every time, so much of what we’re doing here). Here are two that I kept returning to:

Another lullaby for insomniacs by A.E. Stallings - Poetry Foundation

Station, by Maria Hummel

If you have any examples that you love, or advice that you’ve found has helped, please do share.

Thank you

Nancy Hanna

for the invitation to work on our craft. Which for some of us might have meant trying a new form, for others a reminder to reunite with a form used in the past.

I’m hoping that after today I’ll be full of enthusiasm to try again over the weekend.

Share your pantoums my friends,

Nelly x