Writing Skill: Play with a cinquain

The cinquain is a concise and wonderfully versatile little poem form. If you're new to writing poems, it's perfect for trying the notion out; if you're an experienced poet, it's a lovely way to hone your concision. It also has some delicious variations if you want to settle in for longer. ("Cinquain" is basically Frenchified poetry-speak for a "fivey".) It's super simple: no rhyme scheme, no set metre, just 5 lines which steadily increase in length, then abruptly jump back down:

Line 1: 2 syllables
Line 2: 4 syllables
Line 3: 6 syllables
Line 4: 8 syllables
Line 5: 2 syllables

For example...

I walk
the Erl-King's wood
of beechmast, berries, ripe
decay, and golden pools of sun
that lie.

It was invented by Adelaide Crapsey around the turn of the century. She used iambic metre (de-DUM) and my example does too, but you can use whatever metre suits you, or none.

Then you can also spin it through all sorts of fun variations, if you don't feel like stopping at just one. You can write a cinquain "chain", where the last line of one cinquain is reused as the first line of the next. You can also write a "cinquain swirl", which is a bunch of them linked together, sharing the two-syllable line as the last/first, and the two-syllable line is the same each time.

Here's a cinquain chain I wrote, from the prompt "falls to the soul" (a snippet from Pablo Neruda's poem, "Tonight I can write the saddest lines"). In each stanza, the last line becomes the first line of the next stanza. Right at the end, it ties in a circle by using the first line of the poem as the last line.

Frost-dark
falls. To the soul
tiny stabs of light are
constellations, a sparse dot-to-dot
promise.

Promise
five dots can make
the big dipper, nineteen
are somehow Orion, and that’s
the sword.

The sword
of Damocles,
hanging by a horse hair
above the throne, mocks what you wished
on stars.

On stars,
we pin such shapes,
wildly drawing contours
of beasts and gods, between dots, on
frost-dark.

And here's a cinquain swirl, showing how the same two-syllable line is used throughout. 

Grinning,
arrange the toys
(yes, we have toys) holding
birthday gifts, all excited, all
grinning:
people thought I’d
outgrow my silliness
or gift it to kids, but I’m still
grinning,
carefree, kid-free,
seeing lichen, pebbles,
moss-forests, how the ripples are
grinning
at the sun, all
the grass-blades’ chatter, their
stems squeaking when tugged: my world is
grinning
with things that I’m
supposed to have lost and
only glimpse again through children
grinning.

For something to write about, I suggest trying it out for the first time with a descriptive poem: simply describing what's around you or what you've seen today, as I did in my first example, using that day's walk. If you want to take description further, describe an artwork. (That's called ekphrasis, in poetry.) Minimalism seems a good fit for a five-liner, so this article on Minimalism from the Tate could be useful for inspiration.   

Start with a cinquain or five, try it out, see how it feels, and then chain or swirl to your heart's content!

Note: To respect copyright, my blog posts only use my own poems as examples. On taught courses, I'm licensed to give my students copyright material, so you'll see lots of other people's work.

---

If you want to explore writing poems more, the Meddling with Poetry course this Oct–Nov will introduce you to heaps of different poetry forms, approaches, and facets of language, all through playful workshop-style classes.

Join online from anywhere (Thurs evenings UK time) OR in person in Oxford (Wed evenings). Plus each week’s Poem-A-Day booklet gives you everything you need if you want to try the transformative poem-a-day practice, during the course or afterwards.

Click here to find out what you'll explore and to book your place.