Poetry BWR109.Wj

Whatever you write has sound. People hear your words in their heads, and so the sounds you create can draw people's attention to your message. Poets use a range of musical and figurative devices to achieve their effects. Some of these effects relate to the rhythm and metre of the words. The study of rhythm, stress, and pitch in speech is called prosody. In poetry, the meter (or metre) is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse.

The process by which we create a poem may be more important than the actual poem we create. Studies have shown that creativity can emerge after periods of depression and loneliness. For example, Elizabeth Layton created line drawings to develop her talent and used this creativity to overcome her depression. As you have read in the previous lessons, poets may have experienced depression and loss.

Creative expression can benefit us in many ways according to Ebersole and Hess (1998), who state that it can help us to –

•make a positive out of a loss, depression or bad experience
•create order and balance
•maintain our integrity
•resolve conflicts
•give us a sense of control over the external world
•help us to clarify our thoughts
Lesson Structure

COURSE CONTENT

There are 9 lessons in this course:

1.Introduction -brief description of the many different types of poetry, poetry forms and terminology.
2.The Work of Other Poets
3.Encouraging your creativity.
4.Developing different styles of poetry - Some Classic Styles
5.Developing different styles of poetry - Following the Rules
6.Developing different styles of poetry - Poetry for Story Telling
7.Developing different styles of poetry - Styles for Fun and Trickery
8.Getting your work published - how and where
9.The next phase - how to continue to improve

Each lesson culminates in an assignment which is submitted to the college, marked by the college's tutors and returned to you with any relevant suggestions, comments, and if necessary, extra reading.

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There are a number of standard styles or formats which poems tend to follow. These include:

Poems Focussed on Telling a Story

Ballad Style
This is a poem that tells a story; which is constructed as a series of stanzas. Each stanza would typically be two or four lines and usually a refrain. Balads often tell stories that are derived from folk lore or historical events.

Monody
This is a poem that laments the death (or cessation of existence) of a person, animal or thing.

Epitaph Style
This is a short poem commemorating the life of a deceased person; usually on a tombstone.

Classic Styles

An Ode
This is a poem that praises or speaks highly of something, some place or someone.

Sonnet
A lyric poem of fourteen lines, which may follow any of a variety of different rhyming schemes. There are a variety of different types of sonnets (eg. Italian sonnet, Shakesperean Sonnet)

Haiku
This is a Japanese style that is made up of standardized numbers of syllables in each line; but where lines do not rhyme. It is also written of focus on nature.

Haiku (also called nature or seasonal haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Haiku is usually written in the present tense and focuses on nature (seasons).

Monorhyme
This is where all the lines have the same rhyme

Fun & Trick Poems

Tongue Twister
These involve lines that are difficult to pronounce when you speak the line fast.

Limerick Style
This is characterised by humour, rhyme and often nonsense.

Shape Poetry
Lines are written in a way that represents the shape of what you are writing about
Eg. If your subject is a person, the poem is written so that the lines comprise the shape of a person

Palindrome
This is a poem where lines read the same whether read from start to finish or (backwards) from finish to start.

Poems classified according to how lines are constructed & arranged

Quatrain Style
Comprises block of four lines of verse that adhere to a specific rhyming pattern

Pantoum
A pantoum is a poem that joins together a series of quatrains.

Acrostic Style
This is poetry that is constructed in such a way that when the first letter of each line is taken, and those letters compiled together; they will spell one or more words. The words spelt are often the same as the title

Free Verse
Free Verse is irregular. Content is free of traditional rules -free from fixed meter or rhyme.

Villanelle
A Villanelle is a nineteen-line poem consisting of a very specific rhyming scheme (eg. ide, idi, idi, idi, idee).