5C's Conference

On Friday, April 13, I'll be attending the 5C's Conference. Some of the sessions look pretty interesting. Several of them are on grammar, so I'm hoping to get some ideas for my developmental classes at Red Rocks this summer.

Serious about Writing Poetry Again

I guess I'm getting serious about writing poetry again and having it published. I bought a copy of 2007 Poets Market and have been looking for markets for the type of poetry I do and want to write, primarily traditional lyrical forms.

I ran across a form I hadn't tried before: the cinquain. This form has five lines (hence the name) with two, four, six, eight, and two syllables, respectively. It can be iambic, but that isn't necessary. When I first read about this form, I thought it would be interesting to write one with all synonyms for being alone. Here's what I came up with:


One

alone --
solitary --
solo -- isolated --
segregated -- separated --
lonely


I like the way the syllable "lone" frames the middle three lines. I also like the irony of all the words for being alone having an even number of syllables.

Yesterday I also wrote a couple of haiku, scifaiku, actually. I'm not going to post them because I want to try to get them published, and some publishers apparently consider being posted in a blog or on a web site to be prior publication, which means they will pay less or not accept them.