Meddle with an elevenie poem

To celebrate the upcoming Meddling with Poetry course, I'm sharing 16 delicious forms of poetry I've discovered, each of them a delight to play with.

The elevenie's an absolute beauty and a very handy form to have up your sleeve when you want a quickie. The form is blissfully simple and creatively constrained, so you can launch in with just your noun (that's a thing word) and discover the rest as you go, through following its strict rules. You can also write double and triple elevenies if you want, or as many as you please. Here are some of my draft elevenies:

Single elevenie

Spiderwebs
catch petals
strung in midair
elf-veils suspended, decaying
uncertainty.


Elevenie series: Colour elevenies

Clouds
bulge lavender
over slate roofs
ragged with distant rain
privately.

Beech
brittles copper
against red brick
glowing in late sun
inviting.

Featherboards
slide creamily
around the courtyard
wrapping the edges in
calm.

Willow
curls greenly
in humid stillness
every twig twisting with
delight.

Variation: for a fun / silly group game, try playing these "Consequence" style: each person writes a line, folds their paper, and passes it on. The resulting poems can end up hilarious, nonsensical, or uncannily brilliant. This was one I wrote with my nieces, Isabel (11, black pen) and Harriet (8, orange pen). Remember that we couldn't see what each other were writing!

Parrots
hover, untidily
up down everywhere
They dream of jungles
terrified



Note: To respect copyright, these blog posts will only use my own poems as examples. On the course, I'm licensed to give my students copyright poems, so you'll see lots of others.

The Meddling with Poetry course explores a host of different poetry forms, as well as the musicality of language, poetic imagery, and other aspects of the poetic. Absolute beginners and experienced writers are equally welcome. You can read more details and book a place here.