Tags

,

Hello all, today it is time to revisit a form we tried more than 10 years ago. You can find the original prompt here, but let me try to summarise a little.

Classical English poetry has several origins but mostly there are two origins, a Germanic (or anglo-saxon) and a latin coming mostly from France and later Italy. 

The Latin verse is the one we know the best today. We learn about feet (iambs, dactyls…) and rhymes and rhyme schemes and from that we have sonnets, rondeaus, villanelles etc. All very suitable for music and dance.

The Germanic tradition of poetry was much more suited for storytelling and here we do not count syllables, we care less about rhymes. Still we care about rhythm using stress syllables without counting the unstressed syllables between.

To put further stress to the stressed syllables we use alliteration.

So this is the way I have been taught (thank you Tony)

The alliterative verse has four stressed syllables per line. 

The three first syllables alliterate, while the fourth does not.

There is a caesura (pause) between the first two stressed syllables and the last two.
If you want to, you may put a line break or some punctuation to make the caesura clear.

I have written a few alliterative verses lately you may use as an example, as this one for example.

Before Thunder

Thor before the bolt: a baby grown from the earth
from soil in sudden of light; his strength from rock
to the fostered the fury: forceful as God, as a man
and yet as a youngster; not yardlong, little and raw
a gem to be glossed; still gowned in a dress
he widened and grew to wear in swagger, his pride
but hammerless still, a sapling fed on the milk
from mother that were more of a man than her son
until forged out of fire his fist grasped the hammer
that Thor with a thud turned into thunder and rain..

Av Mårten Eskil Winge – Nationalmuseum, Public Domain

I have tried to bold the stressed syllables and as you see we get a rhythm: of Boom-Boom-Boom-Crash, which for the reader and listener made it easier to remember.

So today I want you to try your poetic skills in writing alliterative verse according to the above. 

When you have written your poem, link it up with Mr Linky below, comment below if you want and visit the other poets, leave a comment and don’t forget to read the poems aloud to discover the wonderful world of alliterative verse.