sherlock60 | Mrs. Hudson's Poetry Page: The Priory School

Welcome once again to my poetry page!

I hope each week you will read Dr. Watson’s delightful narrative and then go on to write a poem related to it in some way. All forms of poetry are permitted, and further down the page there is a selection you might like to consider using over the coming weeks.

And here, courtesy of my housemaid Rachel, is this week’s suggested poem to read—a suggestion inspired by the themes and subjects in this week's story. Hopefully you will enjoy the poem, and perhaps it may give you some ideas for a poem of your own or allow you to look at Dr. Watson's story in a new way.

King Lear, Edmund's monologue "Thou, nature, art my goddess"

By William Shakespeare

Thank you so much to Rachel. And here is also a new poetry form to try: the barzelletta.

Lawrence Eberhart on Poets Collective gives this definition (for the ‘couplet’ barzelletta):

...Often composed as a joke with moral instruction there is also evidence of serious love poems linked to the Barzelletta...

• The “couplet” Barzelletta is:

○ lyrical.
○ stanzaic, written in any number of couplets.
○ metered, often iambic, line length optional although originally octosyllabic.
○ often written employing internal rhyme, end words are usually unrhymed.
○ written with wit and a didactic (instructional) and/or aphor[ist]ic (concise statement of scientific principle) tone.

As a reminder, if you wanted to use an iambic, octosyllabic line, that would be: te TUM, te TUM, te TUM, te TUM.

Here is my example:

A violin from dusk to dawn
Hold up your chin, and show your pluck

Not all can win sweet victory
With each gin there comes the tonic

Here floating in comes more flotsam
Please use the bin and not the floor

Though there’s a skin you’re left to clean
You have to grin and… bear it all.

But you do not have to use that form. Any form of poetry is welcome this week—and every week! Here are a few suggestions for you:

221B verselet, abecedarian poetry, acrostic poetry, alexandrine, ballad, barzelletta, beeswing, blackout poetry, blitz poem, blues stanza, bref double, Burns stanza, call and response, chastushka, cinquain, circular poetry, clerihew, colour poems, compound word verse, concrete poetry, Cornish verse, curtal sonnet, diamante, doggerel, double dactyl, echo verse, ekphrasis, elegiac couplet, elegiac stanza, elfje, englyn, epigram, epistle, epitaph, epulaeryu, Etheree, fable, Fib, florette, found poetry, free verse, ghazal, haiku, hay(na)ku, In Memoriam stanza, Italian sonnet, jueju, kennings poem, lanturne, lies, limerick, line messaging, list poem, lyric poetry, mathnawī, micropoetry, mini-monoverse, musette, nonsense verse, palindrome poetry, pantoum, Parallelismus Membrorum, poem cycle, quatern, quintilla, renga, rhyming alliterisen, riddle, rime couée, rispetto, Schüttelreim, sedoka, septet, sestina, shadorma, sonnet, stream of consciousness, tanka, tercet, terza rima, tongue twister poetry, triangular triplet, triolet, Tyburn, villanelle

Please leave all your poems inspired by The Priory School in the comments on this post. I look forward to seeing them!

Warm regards,

Mrs. Hudson