So, this form birthed a few years ago from an admittedly overly geeky, slightly masochistic brain, when I was attempting to think of the most ridiculous form I could think of. There are variations, and I’ll talk about those later, but the basic idea is that you write a double sestina where those 12 repeated...Read More

Time for another prompt! This one a favorite of my hometown poetry family at the CMC Poetry Jam. Or, as we affectionally call it, The First Church of the Word. This one is very simple, and requires two or more people. Simply put, ring up or text a writer friend, and ask them for a...Read More

We’re back! And vowing to be more consistent. A new regular series we’ll be adding is writing exercises and prompts, something we’ve been meaning to do. And one prompt that I, Johnny, am fond of is the tried and true random word selection prompt, where you pick between one and five words, and use them...Read More

Friends, I couldn’t let it go. Here’s the problem with what has been moderately agreed upon to be Swinburn’s double sestina: first, it isn’t widely agreed upon, and some say it’s random, and secondly (and perhaps most importantly), it doesn’t follow the logic of the sestina. The sestina follows a couple of rules, or rather...Read More

Let’s talk Sestinas. The Sestina is an complex form based in intricate repetition. It’s a 39 line poem attributed to Arnaut Daniel from the late 12th century, of Medieval French origin. The original Sestina is 6 stanzas of 6 lines and a concluding triplet envoy, where the end words, or teleutons, of the first stanza’s 6 lines are repeated throughout the...Read More

April, as you might know, is National Poetry Month. Therefor, many poets see that as a chance to do the poetic version of NaNoWriMo and do NaPoWriMo, meaning 30 poems in 30 days.  A bit of a combination of writing workshop, sprint, marathon and self-flagellation. Of course, leave it to my own community of Gainesville...Read More