P – Poetry in the Park
Poetry in the Park was inspired during my time as Poet in Residence at a local Victorian Park. This poem will be included in my upcoming poetry collection, In a Delightful Country.
Poetry in the Park
Pulham fountain flows,
children clamber
on stained Jersey cows,
finches flit from tree to tree.
ducks dive,
coots and moorhens chug.
Yarn bombs cuddle bark,
kiss orange fiery branches
under liquid amber’s umbrella.
***
P – Penta-decima
Have you ever thought about inventing your own poetry form? Well that was one of the tasks set by Alison Chisholm (Poet, Judge and Tutor) last year at Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, using a prompt of ‘New Beginnings.’
Not wanting to be beaten, I stayed up half the night on the Wednesday to reach a first draft of a poem in the form of my own invention, a Penta-Decima.
A Penta Decima consists of:
15 lines.
5 stanzas written in tercets.
The first line of the first four stanzas rhyme with each other.
First and third line rhyme in the final stanza.
The lines are not syllable controlled so offer freedom.
***
Here’s my first Penta Decima which is in its very early stages so subject to change but it will give you the idea.
I’d love to hear what you think of this form and please feel free to have a go and post your own.
Monochrome
The 12 x 10 space is cold and bare,
Georgian windows stripped from drapes,
footfalls echo through the house.
A heavy drop reveals a chair,
married up with a double couch,
leather upholstery steals o2.
Muscled men settle a bed on the stair,
they take a deep breath, then heave.
Rooms start to take shape.
A black-framed print boasts a polar bear,
Royal Doulton’s Top Dogs claim the mantlepiece.
Fixtures and fittings form a new I.D.
Today a monochrome mould-
Time to shade in colour, create
tomorrow’s me and throw out the old.
Patricia M Osborne 
I think the Penta Decima seems to lend itself to an elegiac mood, and I have to say I found it
a challenge to write, but very rewarding. The rhyme scheme is quite subtle and understated – nice.
Here’s my Penta Decima, written after a second trip to Grindleford in Derbyshire in August/ September 2017.
The Return
The poem is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend Gina Bunbury (January 27th 1943 – August 8th 2017)
We might have touched down just yesterday
to the same butterflies, the same bees — the sky
as blue, tea roses still in bloom, the bench free.
Two months, but we might never have been away
from our mini Provence. Only the gunnera
shows the passing of time: brown-edged,
shrivelling, it has shrunk back, giving way
to the river. Water music weeps over stone:
a requiem for summer. Still, as before,
we soak up sunshine, savour the bouquet
of lavender riding warm air, and try not to think
sadly of September, or the week to come.
We both knew, but found it too hard to say:
our last time here was before we heard she’d gone,
making this quite a different sort of day.
LikeLike
Thank you, Corinne and thank you for sharing your poem in the form of a Penta Decima. If it’s okay with you I think this deserves to be featured on the blog. I’ll move it later on after this evening’s book signing event.
LikeLike
That would be super – thanks, Tricia
LikeLike