The ISIS magazine presents INFORMAL POETRY, a national 500 WORDS OF POETRY

COMPETITION, open to ANY UNIVERSITY STUDENT studying in the UK.

Entrants can write up to 500 words of poetry – but there’s a catch. You have to disrupt within one of the
five traditional forms given below.

1. Dantesque Terza Rima

2. Shakespearean Sonnet
3. Rubāʿī
4. Ghazal
5. Chaucer’s Rhyme Royal

You are invited to write up to three poems, all of which MUST obey the metrical and rhythmic
requirements of the supplied forms. Within the form, they MUST provide content which disrupts or
reclaims the form through subject matter, imagery, or any other poetic device you see fit. Unheard
voices, unique experience, and above all insight and thoughtfulness in a sphere of life which is rarely
given the grandiosity of the forms we have provided are all desired. Email us with any questions.

Send your entry to isiseditor@gmail.com with the subject 500 WORDS. The top poem will be published
in next term's magazine.

Competition closes at MIDNIGHT on the 20th of January.

See details and examples of the five forms below.

 THE FIVE FORMS:

Dantesque Terza Rima:

Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern ABA BCB CDC DED. There is no
limit to the number of lines, but poems or sections of poems written in terza rima end with either a
single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet. This is an Italian form,
most famously used by Dante in The Divine Comedy. In Dante it is interpreted to reflect The Holy
Trinity. Rarely used in English, but seen in Derek Walcott’s Omeros and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ode to
the West Wind:

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,

Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,

Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,

Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill…

Editor’s note: this one looks easy but the comparative lack of rhyme words in English as opposed to
Italian makes it deceptively difficult to carry across naturally, and without contrivance of image and
phrase.

Further Reading:
https://www.youngwriters.co.uk/types-terza-rima
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/terza.html
https://www.thoughtco.com/terza-rima-2725581
https://ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk:6038/core/services/aop-cambridge-
core/content/view/4035E086434E18109391A97B28997D1F/9781139001328c11_p181-
200_CBO.pdf/poetics_of_chaos_and_harmony.pdf

Shakespearean Sonnet:
A 14-line poem with a variable rhyme scheme originating in Italy and brought to England by Sir
Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey in the 16th century. Literally a “little song,” the sonnet
traditionally reflects upon a single sentiment, with a clarification or “turn” of thought in its concluding
lines. There are many different types of sonnets. Wyatt and Surrey developed the English (or
Shakespearean) sonnet, which condenses the 14 lines into one stanza of three quatrains and a concluding
couplet, with a rhyme scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG.

Sonnet 88: (Shakespeare)

When thou shalt be disposed to set me light,
And place my merit in the eye of scorn,
Upon thy side, against myself I'll fight,
And prove thee virtuous, though thou art forsworn.
With mine own weakness being best acquainted,
Upon thy part I can set down a story
Of faults concealed, wherein I am attainted;
That thou in losing me shalt win much glory:
And I by this will be a gainer too;
For bending all my loving thoughts on thee,
The injuries that to myself I do,
Doing thee vantage, double-vantage me.
Such is my love, to thee I so belong,
That for thy right, myself will bear all wrong.

Editor’s Note: While seemingly overplayed and perhaps the most ‘institutional’ form in English poetry,
the sonnet as developed by Shakespeare presents the most astounding ability for succinctness and
cohesive elaboration of identity and thought.

Further Reading:
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/oxford/reader.action?docID=272824
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/sonnetstyle.html
https://www.youngwriters.co.uk/types-shakespearean-sonnet
Rubāʿī

From Arabic: ‫ رﺑﺎﻋﯽ‬rubāʿiyy, plural ‫ رﺑﺎﻋﯿﺎت‬rubāʿiyāt). A poem or a verse of a poem consisting of four
lines. It refers specifically to a form of Persian poetry, or its derivative form in English and other
languages
In classical Persian poetry, the ruba'i is written as a four-line (or two-couplet) poem, with a rhyme-
scheme AABA or AAAA.

I
Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.

II
Before the phantom of False morning died,
Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried,
"When all the Temple is prepared within,
Why nods the drowsy Worshipper outside?"

III
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
Calligraphic rendition of a ruba'i
The Tavern shouted--"Open then the Door! attributed to Omar Khayyam
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more."

IV
Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the White Hand Of Moses on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.

(This is Edward FitzGerald’s translation of the Persian original, The

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam which is by far the most well-known
Rubaiyat in the English-speaking world)

Further Reading:
http://classicalpoets.org/2016/11/02/how-to-write-a-rubaiyat-with-examples/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruba%CA%BFi
http://dbooks.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/books/PDFs/503068016.pdf
https://aeon.co/ideas/how-the-rubaiyat-of-omar-khayyam-inspired-victorian-hedonists
Martin, W. H., & Mason, S. (Eds.). (2011). Edward fitzgeralds rubáiyát of omar khayyám : a famous
poem and its influence. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com (accessible via SOLO)

Ghazal:

Originally an Arabic verse form dealing with loss and romantic love, medieval Persian poets embraced
the ghazal, eventually making it their own. Consisting of syntactically and grammatically complete
couplets, the form also has an intricate rhyme scheme. Each couplet ends on the same word or phrase
(the radif) and is preceded by the couplet’s rhyming word (the qafia, which appears twice in the first
couplet). The last couplet includes a proper name, often of the poets. In the Persian tradition, each
couplet was of the same meter and length, and the subject matter included both erotic longing and
religious belief or mysticism. English-language poets who have composed in the form include Adrienne
Rich, John Hollander, and Agha Shahid Ali; see Ali’s “Tonight” and Patricia Smith’s “Hip-Hop
Ghazal.” The ghazal is one of the most widespread and popular poetic forms, especially across the
Middle East and South Asia. In India, Jagjit Singh, popularly known as "The Ghazal King",
popularized ghazals and ghazal singing among scores of music lovers. In a similar manner to Haiku, the
Ghazal is gaining popularity among western poetry readers.

Gotta love us brown girls, munching on fat, swinging blue hips,

decked out in shells and splashes, Lawdie, bringing them woo hips.

As the jukebox teases, watch my sistas throat the heartbreak,

inhaling bassline, cracking backbone and singing thru hips.

Like something boneless, we glide silent, seeping 'tween floorboards,

wrapping around the hims, and ooh wee, clinging like glue hips.

Engines grinding, rotating, smokin', gotta pull back some.

Natural minds are lost at the mere sight of ringing true hips.

Gotta love us girls, just struttin' down Manhattan streets

killing the menfolk with a dose of that stinging view. Hips.

Crying 'bout getting old—Patricia, you need to get up off

what God gave you. Say a prayer and start slinging. Cue hips.

Further Reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazal
https://www.brighthubeducation.com/help-with-writing/128096-the-poetic-form-of-the-ghazal/
https://ghazalpage.org/library/essays/essay-history-of-ghazal-david-jalajel/
https://ghazalpage.org/library/introduction/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4ZjXt0Fl58
Chaucer’s Rhyme Royal:

A stanza of seven 10-syllable lines, rhyming ABABBCC, popularized by Geoffrey Chaucer and termed
“royal” because his imitator, James I of Scotland, employed it in his own verse. In addition to Chaucer’s
Troilus and Criseyde, see Sir Thomas Wyatt’s “They flee from me” and William Wordsworth’s
“Resolution and Independence.”

And so bifel, whan comen was the tyme

Of Aperil, whan clothed is the mede
With newe grene, of lusty Veer the pryme,
And swote smellen floures white and rede,
In sondry wises shewed, as I rede,
The folk of Troie hir observaunces olde,
Palladiones feste for to holde.

And to the temple, in al hir beste wyse,

In general ther wente many a wight,
To herknen of Palladion the servyse;
And namely, so many a lusty knyght,
So many a lady fressh and mayden bright,
Ful wel arayed, both meste, mene, and leste,
Ye, bothe for the seson and the feste.

http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/special/litsubs/style/rime-roy.html
https://www.jstor.org/stable/4174397
http://www.volecentral.co.uk/vf/rime_royal.htm