Read Write Believe

Friday, October 30, 2026

Poetry Friday: The Terzanelle

October's challenge was the terzanelle, a hybrid of the villanelle and the terza rima. I'm hesitant to paraphrase and misstate the rules, so I'm just going to point you to the Writer's Digest post about this form, which combines the repetition of the villanelle with the interwoven rhymes of the terza rima. According to this other post, there are two possible options for the ending quatrain.

Oh, and in regular meter, if possible. Yeah....

It was actually less complicated than it sounds, due to reusing the middle lines over and over...but we, of course, decided to up the challenge by using two rhyming words we'd picked as a group: might and slight.

Got that? Enough, surely?

Except I ALSO wanted to write something spooky-ish since we're posting on the day before Halloween. (That's on me.)

Here it is, with thanks to Gerard Manley Hopkins for his phrase "deep down things" (from one of my favorite poems.)

On the Eve of All Souls

On the Eve of All Souls,

in the deep of the shade,

trees shudder like ghouls

Don’t be afraid;

it’s but shadows

in the deep of the shade—

earth shaking her bedclothes,

sun shuttering her might;

It’s but shadows,

sighs, shivers, a sleight

of deep down things—

sun shuttering her might

so we see everything’s

rooted in rot and must

of deep down things

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust

rooted in rot and must,

on the Eve of All Souls,

trees shudder like ghouls.

Note: instead of slight, I used the sound-alike word sleight, which here means "quick hand movements, cleverness, or a trick or stratagem."

My Poetry Sisters terzanelles are here:

Poetry Friday is hosted today by Jone.

Friday, September 25, 2026

Poetry Friday: "It was all my fault"

One of the many waterfalls
we visited in Oregon. For the record,
there were eleven switchbacks to get to the top.

September's prompt was simple: write a poem using, or inspired by, the phrase "it was all my fault..." The prompt is courtesy of Colby Sharp, from his book, The Creativity Project. (Our own Mary Lee says it's on page 257.) In our ZOOM meetup, we laughed about things we'd done that were clearly, embarrassingly, undoubtedly our fault---like me spilling an entire red berry smoothie into my cute summer straw purse as I was juggling too many things on the way to a fancy event. Or me, accidentally telling my MIL as I put an item into the donation box, that I'd "never used" that thing, which OF COURSE she'd given me. (How, oh how, could I have forgotten?"

So I suppose I could've written about those blunders, but for me, they make better anecdotes than poems. What I wanted to explore was the crazy line that popped into my head when I thought about this prompt:

It was all my fault... that the river ran downhill.

What? That's not my fault, clearly. But isn't everything connected? How are we entwined with the natural world? I suppose I was thinking these odd things because I'd just finished the Mary Oliver documentary, Saved by the Beauty of the World. Her poems (and her life) declare that there is no separation. So I wrote about that.

It was all my fault...

It was all my fault

that the river ran downhill,

I should’ve told it

that the occasional hiccup

and spume as it bumbled

into stones

presaged the cliff

ahead

But if I had, then it would not

have found itself

stretched into steel ropes

that cut the earth with ease,

vibrating like vocal chords

proclaiming with throaty

belches that nothing

ends.

And then, for fun, I thought of other parts of nature I was not responsible for, and wrote about my connection to them, too.

It was all my fault

that the sun wearily rose today,

wan and hung-over.

I was doing yoga, see—

and those salutations work like

a charm.

It was all my fault

she was dragged, dizzy

with heat from the muscled

arms of the night.

I was writing a poem, see—

and who can do that in the dark?

It was all my fault

the birds arrived next,

feathers awry and twittering

with hunger.

I was alive, see—

and their song

filled my belly with

now.

You can find my Poetry Sisters' responses to "It was all my fault..." here:

Tricia (who is hosting Poetry Friday today!)

Friday, August 28, 2026

Poetry Friday: Haiku Sonnet

Greetings! I've missed the last few challenges, so I'm glad to be back...even if it's to side-eye the confusing mashup that is the haiku sonnet. (No one does side-eye quite like the Highland "coo." Although the one below was a bull. A very friendly fellow.)

The form is defined by four three-line haikus, and an ending couplet, for a total of the sonnet's traditional fourteen lines. Sounds straightforward enough, but could two things be more opposite? Haiku doesn't use a rhyme scheme, celebrates brevity and images, and is rarely narrative. Sonnets have a myriad of rhyme schemes, and while not epic, are much longer, and written in iambic pentameter or other meter. I suppose they do have imagery in common, so I decided to focus on that, drawing on memories of my recent trip to Scotland.

Lichen fuzz beards rocks,
their caved cheeks sharp underfoot
we dodge, dip and twist

Black slugs share the trail
while we talk of unicorns,
not white, but mist-grey

Fords laid yesterday
are now rain-swallowed crossings
we must haul new stones

A roofless shelter
sinking in gathering clouds
births reedy saplings

We pause for tomato soup,
hot and red, it is our sun.

----Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reserved)