Ideas for teaching

1. Notes on writing poems (Alan Maley, 2006)

2. Notes on writing stories (Alan Maley, 2006)

3. Form poems (Alan Maley, 2007)

4. Advice to Writers from Writers. From Alan Maley (2012)

5. Quotes taken from Stop what you're doing and read this!  (Vintage 2011) (uploaded on 21 October 2012)

Contributed by Alan Maley (September 2007)

Form Poems.

Haiku:

Writing a haiku

Is easy: all you do is

Count the syllables.

Cinquain:

Cinquains -

Two syllables

Then four in the next line.

The next two lines have six and eight.

That's it!

Clerihew:

To write a simple Clerihew

Is really not so hard to do.

The first couplet rhymes, so does the next,

The last line adds a little extra to the text.

Limerick:

The people who write Limericks

Need plenty of knowledge and tricks.

You can't pass the buck

When for rhyme you are stuck,

So you're left in a helluva fix.

Sonnet.

If you would write a sonnet, think again.

The discipline is fabulously hard.

The rhyming scheme alone will give you lots of pain.

Pentameters will leave you feeling scarred.

The sonnet's not the verse for Everyman.

You need to base your poem on a theme,

And most have been used up since time began.

And even with a theme you need a scheme!

Yet what's this life so full of care,

If we can't take a risk or two?

If I were Shakespeare, then of course I'd dare.

But as I'm not, I feel that I don't have a clue.

If I were you, I would not start at all:

Just leave it to the poet down the hall.

Villanelle.

There's nothing like the Villanelle

To make you feel like a real poet -

Provided you can rhyme and spell.

For those who can't it is sheer hell.

You know that you're an idiot and you show it.

There's nothing like the Villanelle.

The trouble is, you cannot tell.

But there's no way that you can blow it,

Provided you can rhyme and spell.

If you would do it really well,

Find out the rhyme-scheme and really know it.

There's nothing like the Villanelle.

Just find repeated lines that really gel.

Write your first line, and then follow it -

Provided you can rhyme and spell.

Keep writing then until the final bell.

At last you are a poet and you know it.

There's nothing like the Villanelle,

Provided you can rhyme and spell!

The Quatrain.

A quatrain has four lines,

Though they do not need to rhyme.

But it can go a b c b

If you want to spend the time.

If you want to make a stir

You can try a b a b,

Which some poets quite prefer -

It's quite easy, as you see.

Something really rather clever

Is to rhyme a b b a,

But I really need to say

That we find it almost never.

Pairing rhymed couplets a a b b

Is definitely not for me:

For they risk sounding tedious

Unless you're quite ingenious.

I am sure that you can think

Of other ways to rhyme the lines,

But as I said at the beginning,

There's no need to rhyme at all.