Poem of the Month Competition
POETIC FORM Sonnet *
POETIC FORM Sonnet *
Deadline: End September 2006
HERE'S WHAT TO DO…
Write a Sonnet in the space provided below, fill in your name and email, and press 'Submit poem'. We will select our favourite poem to appear on the website in April. Good luck, and thank-you!
* What's a Sonnet?
The English sonnet is composed of three quatrains (four lines), abab cdcd efef, with a final couplet, gg, summing up or commenting on what's gone before. The lines are written in iambic pentameters (that is five measures, or feet, each consisting of one short and one long syllable).
Example of a Sonnet by Selima Hill
This description is exerpted from Linda France's regular tuturial in poetic forms featuring in Issues 1-14. The whole article on The Sonnet can be read in Issue 1. The poem was commissioned for this article.
SONNET, by Selima Hill
Beside the river in the dead of night
a cry, and then another, like a knell,
turns the darkened willows into light;
the silence of the woods into a bell;
and in the white house on the moonlit hill
a woman shivers in her narrow bed
to hear the hare; and then the hare is still;
she feels its ginger paws against her head,
his ginger fur, like nervous butterflies,
settling on her cheek and on her hand;
she feels him move; she hears his wild cries
glittering inside her ear like sand:
he's lost inside the forest of her hair
and finds, and steals, her brother's kisses there.