For the launch of the Meddling with Poetry course, starting in Feb 2019, I'll be sharing 16 delicious forms of poetry I've discovered, each of them a delight to play with.
This is a concise, and wonderfully versatile little form, which also has some delicious variations. ("Cinquain" is basically Frenchified poetry-speak for a "fivey".) It's super simple: no rhyme or metre requirements, and just 5 lines, which steadily increase in length, then abruptly jump back down:
Line 1: 2 syllables
Line 2: 4 syllables
Line 3: 6 syllables
Line 4: 8 syllables
Line 5: 2 syllables
For example...
I walk
the Erl-King's wood
of beechmast, berries, ripe
decay, and golden pools of sun
that lie.
You can use iambic metre (de-DUM) if you like, as I did, but you don't have to.
Then you can also spin it through all sorts of fun variations, if you don't feel like stopping at just one. You can write a cinquain "chain", where the last line of one cinquain is the first line of the next. You can also write a "cinquain swirl", which is a bunch of them linked together, sharing the two-syllable line as the last/first, and the two-syllable line is the same each time.
Here's a draft cinquain chain I wrote, from the prompt "falls to the soul" (a snippet from Pablo Neruda's poem, "Tonight I can write the saddest lines"). In each stanza, the last line becomes the first line of the next stanza. Right at the end, it ties in a circle by using the first line of the poem as the last line.
Frost-dark
falls. To the soul
tiny stabs of light are
constellations, a sparse dot-to-dot
promise.
Promise
five dots can make
the big dipper, nineteen
are somehow Orion, and that’s
the sword.
The sword
of Damocles,
hanging by a horse hair
above the throne, mocks what you wished
on stars.
On stars,
we pin such shapes,
wildly drawing contours
of beasts and gods, between dots, on
frost-dark.
And here's a draft cinquain swirl I wrote a couple of months ago, to try it out. It's very similar, but the two-syllable line is shared between each cinquain.
Silentcowled figures hauntthe pool and wrap the windin their cloaks. Empty deckchairs liesilent.Deserted tiersrise under curved clay tileswhere windows stare blankly oversilentterraces. Chairsline the long glass tablepast which leaves scud, awaiting thesilentfeast of unseenguests. The cowled figures wait.Clouds swell. Only the wind is notsilent.
Start with a cinquain or five, try it out, see how it feels, and then chain or swirl to your heart's content!
The Meddling with Poetry course starts in February 2019 and explores a host of different poetry forms, as well as the musicality of language, poetic imagery, and other aspects of the poetic. Absolute beginners and experienced writers are equally welcome. You can read more details and book a place here.