Stanzas (verses)

The thread of a recent Write Poetry zoom workshop was the use of stanzas in a poem.

We first looked at the poem 'A Short Story of Falling' by Alice Oswald.  After which we were asked to write our own short story.  Here's mine:

A Short Story of Sewing 

Thoughts become words, inspired
by form and structure, required

to write a poem. A nonet,
a pantoum but not a sonnet. 

Words in order on the page
hoping the reader will engage

with thoughts and rhymes
and chains and crimes.

These same words written on calico,
cut up, reassembled, ready to sew.

Machined, hand stitched, and bound.
Words no longer clear or found

jumbled together, constrained by chains
The poet’s thoughts alone remain

I didn't do the second exercise which was to write a meditation using the sonnet form. We had looked at Carol Ann Duffy's poem 'Prayer'.

The third poem was 'Tail' by Sujata Bhatt.  I used the poem's two opening lines for my poem.

Marks on Paper 

Meaningless black marks
cover my page, they stretch and grow
                                                into words.

The words clamour for a sentence,
the sentence for another.

The marks become the punctuation
as sentence after sentence forms
until a paragraph is seen.

The black marks write their own story
forming and unforming
bringing ideas and thoughts together. 

Until another page is covered
before the last black mark’s
                                         full stop.

Thanks for being here today
Bernice