“Wuppertal Suspension Monorail: The Green Fifteen” by Werner Wittersheim (https://www.flickr.com/photos/wwwuppertal/)
How are you on this Spring weekend? How about a short form to help you catch up with the NaPoWriMo challenge? “Q” is for “Quinzaine.” For this form I’ll just copy and paste the explanation from the Wikipedia page on the form:
Quinzaine is an unrhymed verse of fifteen syllables. The word comes from the French word quinze, meaning fifteen. The syllables are distributed over three lines so that there are seven syllables in the first line, five in the second line, and three in the third line (7/5/3). The first line makes a statement. The next two lines ask a question relating to that statement.
You can find many examples from other poets at AllPoetry.com. Since this form is so simple, if you know a child or young person who is interested in writing poetry, you might walk him or her through writing a quinzaine, as well. I had an elementary school teacher who introduced us to simple poetry forms, and it both gave me confidence in my writing ability as well as strengthened my curiosity about reading and language.
Feel free to share your poem (or a link to your poem) in the comments.
The NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) challenge is to write 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April. To find out more, visit the official site, NaPoWriMo.net.
About Alyce Wilson
