Happy Saturday – and the last Saturday of a poem a day! If that thought fills you with fear of poetry-withdrawal, then here's a secret: you're allowed to carry on. I've kept going for years at a time, give or take the odd break, and no-one's stopped me yet. And if you join my Meddling with Poetry course you'll get enough material to keep on poem-a-day-ing with new forms and new content ideas for 8 weeks if you so choose, plus your poem-a-day booklets grow into a wee bible of 56 types of poems to play with.
Today's prompt is a type of poem: a trenta-sei: Italian for "thirty-six" and one of the lovely repeating forms. As the name suggests, it has 36 lines: 6 stanzas, each of 6 lines. The 6 lines of the first stanza are the first lines for each stanza. Here's how it looks with the stanzas laid out next to each other:
| Stanza 1 | Stanza 2 | Stanza 3 | Stanza 4 | Stanza 5 | Stanza 6 |
| Line 1 | Line 2 | Line 3 | Line 4 | Line 5 | Line 6 |
| Line 2 | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx |
| Line 3 | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx |
| Line 4 | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx |
| Line 5 | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx |
| Line 6 | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx | xxxxx |
So as you can see, the thoughts and images which emerge in the first stanza then open up like a concertina in the rest of the poem.
It also rhymes ababcc for each stanza, bringing in new rhymes for new lines. (The complete rhyme scheme ends up looking like this: ababcc, bdbdee, afafgg, bhbhii, cjcjkk, clclmm.)
Traditionally, each line has 5 stressed syllables. That could be iambic pentametre, di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM-di-DUM. It could be trochaic pentametre: DUM-di DUM-di DUM-di DUM-di DUM-di. It could be anapestic: di-di-DUM five times. Or it could be a completely irregular metre, so long as there's five heavy syllables. Or you could decide to throw that tradition to the winds: it's your poem!
In practice, the most fun way to approach this sort of repeating form is not to worry about planning ahead: just write your first six lines, rhyming them ababcc. (If you already have 6 lines with 5 stressed syllables rhyming ababcc from another poem, you can also cannibalise them!) Then you can pause, map out the next 5 stanzas in your notebook, write in the repeating lines where they'll go, scribble the rhyme scheme in the right-hand margin, and then make another coffee or refresh your glass of wine and settle back in for the rest. You don't have to plan how you'll use the repetition: you might have some ideas, but where the poem actually goes always ends up being something of a surprise, which is part of the fun of it!
For an idea of what to write about, I suggest you think of some treasured anniversary. That might be one you officially celebrate, like a birthday or a romantic anniversary of meeting, moving in, or getting married. Or it might be an unofficial anniverary, one you don't especially mark but the date makes you smile. Some of the anniveraries I treasure are 25 November (the day I first arrived in the UK) and 4 August (the day I moved to Oxford). A trenta-sei is an ideal form for an anniversary like that: just as that initial experience has been opened up and layered by years of memories, so the trenta-sei's first stanza gets opened up and layered in the next five stanzas. If that idea pleases you, don't overthink it: just write six lines about that anniversary, and then let the rest of the trenta-sei unfold as it pleases.
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. It's 8 weeks long, one evening a week, and absolute beginners and experienced writers are equally welcome. You can read more details and book a place here.
