Welcome to Day 3! Today's prompt is a type of poem and as it's Friday, I've got a nifty little quickie for you: a lai poem. This is a teeny tiny thing and unusually for a tiny form, it rhymes. It has three stanzas of three lines each, rhyming aab aab aab. The first two lines of each stanza have 5 syllables and the last line of each has 2. That makes some wonderfully dense rhyme in very few syllables – 6 a-rhymes and 3 b-rhymes.
| Syllables | Rhyme |
| 5 | a |
| 5 | a |
| 2 | b |
|
|
|
| 5 | a |
| 5 | a |
| 2 | b |
|
|
|
| 5 | a |
| 5 | a |
| 2 | b |
NOW, you'll be wanting an example to see how that works, but for reasons I'll shortly explain, I can't give you one of my own. So I'm going to send you off to read an example here, where she's put two lais together. And then you can come back and find out the scandalous reason I'm not showing you mine.
With all its quick rhymes and its abruptly shorter third lines, the lai is beautifully suited to wit, naughtiness, and teasing of all kinds, so if you want an idea of what to write about, I suggest something scandalous. That might be a famous scandal, or something scandalous you did in the past, or just take the opportunity to say something thoroughly scandalous and use the kind of language you'd usually blush at, never mind put in a poem. Which is why (cough, blush) I can't show you mine! What I can show you is my cousin and I giggling over it:
The Meddling with Poetry course explores a host of different poetry forms as well as the musicality of language, poetic imagery, and other aspects of the poetic. It's 8 weeks long, one evening a week, and absolute beginners and experienced writers are equally welcome. You can read more details and book a place here.
