A revised and much better version than the previous one. It still needs more examples and a description of the 9/11 one and to have added to it mentions like the ballad, the sijo and Saino etc. Examples are also needed.

1. New Forms of
Poetry
By Dr. Koshy AV
Talk given at NSS College,
Ottapalom
11- 12- 2021, Six -Seven
pm on Google meet.

2. Form/Genre
• To start with talking about poetic forms one has to start with older
forms initially. These are primarily Greek or Roman in origin like
• The epic poem (Iliad, Odyssey by Homer, Aeneid by Virgil, Paradise
Lost by Milton, Meghnad Badh Kabya by Michael Madhusudan Dutt)
• The ode (Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats)
• The elegy (Elegy written in a country churchyard by Thomas Gray)
• The lyric (I wandered lonely as a cloud by Wordsworth)
• The threnody - lamentation. Monody – dirge.
• The pastoral – bucolic poetry. (the Scholar Gypsy by Matthew
Arnold has traces of this tradition in it)
• The madrigal – Shakespeare uses it in his plays as insets.
• Lays (French, Provencal, sung by the troubadours)
• The sonnet, the couplet, the terza rima and the quatrain can all be
seen in a sense as forms as can the five liner.
“The form of a poem is how we describe
the overarching structure or pattern of
the poem. Some forms of poetry must
stick to very specific rules about length,
rhythm and rhyme. Poets enjoy playing
with form.”

3. Samuel Beckett,
Modernism and
forms/genres
• Alba (dawn-song/aubade)
• Serena (serenade – song of/for the
evening)
• Nocturne. (night song)
• Enueg – a list of vexatious things (“The
list poem” is an extension which can be
a list of anything that becomes a poem)
• Gnome (from to know/gnosis) – terse
epigrammatic poem
• Roundelay – Round song
• Maximes - (maxims)
Samuel Beckett used some very interesting
forms from European countries other than
the English speaking ones, influenced by
the troubadours like Walther von der
Vogelweide. This was in keeping with what
other Modernists were also doing, like TS
Eliot and Ezra Pound. They too expanded
the frame of poetry by looking at poems
from other nations even further abroad than
Europe and America, bringing in not just
Continental poetry but even Chinese poetry.
(the influence of ideograms.) and Japanese
poetry (haikus) that left its clear imprint on
Imagism with its call for brevity and clarity
and sharpness of imagery.
The enuig, enueg or enuech (Old Occitan [eˈnɥitʃ]; "complaint, vexation") is a genre of lyric poetry practised by the troubadours. Somewhat similar to the sirventes, the enuig was generally a litany of complaints, few of th
The enuig, enueg or enuech (Old Occitan [eˈnɥitʃ]; "complaint, vexation") is a genre of lyric poetry practised by the troubadours. Somewhat similar to the sirventes, the enuig was generally a litany of complaints, few o

4. Poetic genres
• Poetic form and genres are often
interchangeable and connected also
to stanzaic forms, poetic structures
and metre, rhyme schemes and
imagery, figures of speech and sound
or musical devices as well as spatial
arrangements (Eg; Calligrammes by
Guillaume Apollinaire) as in concrete
poetry and titling. Nowadays it is
possible to move poetry into other
spaces or media like film.
“Glossary of Poetic Genres
“Whereas a "form" defines the way a
poem arranges sounds, rhythms, or its
appearance on the page, "genre" is
something like the poem's style. Many
poetic genres have a long history, and
new poems almost always seek to
explore a new aspect of the traditional
style and thus to redefine the genre in
some way.”

5. Expanding poetic
forms/genres/struc
tures.
• Fast forward to 2021.
• Because of Coleman Barks,
whether he is a fake or not,
interest in Sufism and Islamic
mysticism revived and partly as
a result and partly due to
interest in
Islam/Kashmir/Afghanistan two
forms came to prominence.
Pound extended interest in poetry, if
thinking of poetry from the point of view of
English poems as its centre temporarily, into
interest in nations other than Eurocentric
ones like China. He translated Chinese
poems into English based on Ernest
Fenellosa’s notes in the collection “Cathay”
and also wrote poems on Chinese stories
and themes. While the translations like
those of Edward Fitzgerald of Omar
Khayyam, and Rumi’s by Coleman Barks
are definitely spurious/fake in a sense, they
did help spark interest in forms not English
or Greek or Roman or European. Trivia:
Pound also translated Noh plays.

6. The Ghazal
• I want to add something more
which is that the English ghazal
has presently evolved into a free
verse form that usually uses
only one of the rules, either
only radeef or if not free verse
then syllabic count and has any
theme as its domain.
Agha Shahid Ali made the ghazal famous by
writing English ghazals.
For all who want a definition of the ghazal here
it is.
1. It must be in couplets. A minimum of five
couplets is required.
2. It must rhyme in the following manner:
‘aa’ in the first couplet and then every second
line of each following couplet should end with
the rhyme ‘a’.
This is called the radeef.
3. There must be a corresponding rhyme with
the first word before the first radeef and the
word just before the radeef in the second line of
each couplet, which is the tough part (at least
for me). This is called the kaafiya.
4. All lines must have the same number of
syllables.
Shabir Ahmad Mir, my friend and an expert
from Kashmir, adds that “radeef is more of a
refrain than rhyme, while kaafiya is rhyme.
Also as per classic Persio-Arabic tradition as
well as Hindi-Urdu prosody a ghazal may not
have a radeef and in that case kaafiya becomes
the end rhyme; such a ghazal being called
as “gair-murradif ghazal”.

7. The Landay
• “I call. You’re stone.
• One day you’ll look and find I’m
gone.”
• “You sold me to an old man,
father.
• May God destroy your home, I
was your daughter.”
• Eliza Griswold has a fascinating
essay on this form.
The Landay is a traditional Afghan poetic
form consisting of a single couplet. There
are nine syllables in the first line, and
thirteen syllables in the second. These
short poems typically address themes of
love, grief, homeland, war, and
separation.

8. The anti-sonnet.
• The roseate sonnet – an alteration by
me of the sonnet form.
• “The rules are as follows: the sonnet
must have two quatrains first, followed
by a couplet and then by a last quatrain
that starts the first line with an R, the
second with an O, the third with an S
and the fourth with an E to form an
acrostic that reads ‘ROSE.’ The form has
no other constraints like rhyme or metre
or blank verse having to be used, unlike
its earlier forms or variants. There is no
fixed syllabic count for the lines.
Petrarchan sonnets are broken into an octave and
a sestet with a rhyme scheme of abbaabba cdecde
or abbaabba cdcdcd. Anti-Petrarchan sonnets do
not need a formal rhyme scheme.
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun which is
Sonnet 130 by Shakespeare is and example.
The caudate sonnet was made by Sonnet Mondal.

9. Trapped – A Roseate Sonnet
Winning Poem for Striking and Memorable Imagery
Reena Prasad
A spider caught in its own web must be how God feels
A spider caught in its own web must be how God feels.
Battles fought in his own name, something he could never foresee
Trapped in the tangles of creation I often wonder how he deals.
Peace and beauty his dreams perhaps but this world refuses to see
Things are always out of hand so he has to do his rounds
It must be terrible never to relax, never to be free of tensions
He can’t ever take a break, not while this race abounds
He must be tired to death of such situations
Why did you build this world dear god, you hold a tiger’s tail
Sentenced forever to a prison with no one to grant you bail
R eason-starved lawyers rush to defend your case
O utsmarted judges with guns decide to decide your fate
S aviour of an ungrateful world if only in decrepit manuscripts
E xisting perhaps to survive just as a bedtime myth

10. The mesostic
• As in the previous poem the
last stanza was an acrostic for
Rose, one form that came up
as a variation on the Acrostic
poem is the Mesostic.
• “https://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=WzPneYqBLAI”
• Mesostic means row down the
middle.
John Cage wrote many.

11. The minison
“Tom Snarsky and Jo Ianni are credited
with popularizing the form of a minimal
sonnet, or “minison”, which is a very
small poetic form with only one rule (and
as with any poetic form, we use the word
“rule” loosely): make a poem with only
fourteen letters total. For example: «
cobalt sea glass » (6 + 3 + 5 = 14). The
sonnet is, of course, a classic and highly
respected form in English poetry, and
there is precedent for this kind of idea
in Seymour Mayne’s word-sonnets, as
well as in the work of Noelle Kocot.”

12. Pantoum
• https://ashberyhouse.yale.edu/p
antoum
“The pantoum is a form of poetry
similar to a villanelle in that there are
repeating lines throughout the poem. It is
composed of a series of quatrains; the
second and fourth lines of each stanza
are repeated as the first and third lines of
the next stanza.”

13. Some very recent
forms
• As Variations on the Roseate
Sonnet a friend of mine called
Dev Mishra made the Tetra
Roseate form. This uses the word
ROSE four times, as acrostic
thrice and in the volta as R in the
beginning and O in the middle of
the first sentence and S in the
beginning and E in the middle of
the second sentence.
Mutiu Olawuyi had made a form called
9/11. The form is syllabic and a tribute to
the victims of the tragedy and an
anthology has been made of such poems
from poets from around the world just as
there is an anthology of Roseate
Sonnets.

14. Duane Vorhees
Creator of the couplette form where in
each line the first two syllables rhyme
with each other and the next two with
each other till the end of the poem.
ROSE COUPLETTE
This of a sin our half-
kiss love: gay in powerful- savage
dull, age.
My Rose from shit, grew this and
shy rose some it through piss sand,
smiles on base
piled wan, faces
escaped like on low
(caped kites drawn, bowstring
stems)
from earth
numb --mirthless to ‘mong
nest-- bloom strungout ape
louts, shapes,
crime- T and of
time V bands love-starved
dwarves;
I too, plant
tried, to phantom (more thin
mums poor, sins)
but them my Rose
cut when shy froze.

15. Roseate-couplette.
• Roseate (Sonnet) - Couplettes
fuse the ease of a Roseate
Sonnet ( form by Koshy AV)
with the difficulty of a
Couplette (coined by Duane
Vorhees).
Form made by Dev Mishra as a hybrid.

16. Tideling
• MY FIRST TIDELING - originator of the form is Daipayan Nair Mine is the
fourth one I have read.
• A bedewed dawn:
• Be my lady faun
• Read my Satyricon's erotic parts and let's cross the Rubicon
• Let's hunt unicorns
• Your horns, my horns
• Read my Satyricon's erotic parts and let's cross the Rubicon
• Loss, lies, gore
• And afterwards peace’s lore
• Read my Satyricon's erotic parts and let's cross the Rubicon
• You bring me bad luck, I tell you, to make you cry
• but apart from you my poems, dear, do not flower; they die
• .
• Read my Satyricon's erotic parts and let's cross the Rubicon
• You be my girl guide, Charon & boar-boatwoman across the Styx, hon
• My dying arms.
• (c) KOSHY AV
Created by Daipayan Nair.
THE NEW POETRY FORM 'TIDELING'
“Based on the research done on quite a
few poetry forms, here I have decided to
come out with a new poetry form named
'TIDELING' which isn't syllable based but
word based.
The pattern:
3-4-R-3-4-R-3-4-R-2CL-RR-3
It consists of three couplets (word based)
with ending rhymes and a refrain (not
metre based) at the end of each couplet
followed by an unrhymed couplet (not
metre based), a refrain pair (with ending
rhymes) and an ending three word
soliloquy.”
By Daipayan Nair

17. Amita Paul
• “The Tapestry Poem is woven from many strands
of reality , imagination , remembered snatches of
Poetry Prose and Song , and quotations from real
life and other authors woven together into one
dominant theme
• Though many modern poets particularly TS Eliot ,
whose influence few poets who have come after
him have escaped , have practiced something
similar , none have so far laid particular claim to
the interwoven Tapestry like quality of such a new
kind of poetry or to this new name for the genre
• …It’s a form fraught with the danger of inviting
charges of plagiarism or imitation or infringement
of privacy or copyright, so it needs to be practised
with utmost caution
• It is not just a cut and paste job but an
interweaving of strands consciously into one
dominant narrative .” - by Amita Paul.
• Koshy AV: The poems are similar to High
Modernist mini epics as pointed out by poets like
WC Williams, Hart Crane, David Jones etc.
The tapestry poem

18. Erasure or Black
out poems
• “Kate Baer, author of the New York Times bestseller
What Kind of Woman, takes an almost conversational
approach to erasure in her new collection, I Hope This
Finds You Well. Baer’s strategy was to “write back” to
the trolls and bigots on her blog, using the erasure
technique to turn dead wood into spiky poems.
Previously, she had always deleted abusive comments.
But when one day she read a message from a woman
who disagreed with her about police accountability, she
says “the words stuck out to me in a new form”.
• “On a whim I took a screen shot of her message, blotted
out some lines with the pen tool, and hit post,” she
explains. The context of the resulting poem, Re: Holding
Police Accountable, was George Floyd’s murder.”
• “Perhaps erasure poetry is always inherently a political
act…a violent act.” – Jennifer Cheng.
“Erasure poetry, also known
as blackout poetry, is a form of found
poetry wherein a poet takes an existing
text and erases, blacks out, or otherwise
obscures a large portion of the text,
creating a wholly new work from what
remains.”
It has also been called “blanked verse.”
Perhaps erasure poetry is always inherently a political act, perhaps it is always inherently a violent actJennifer S Cheng

19. Found poetry.
• “Examples of found poems can be seen in the
work of Blaise Cendrars, David Antin,
and Charles Reznikoff. In his book Testimony,
Reznikoff created poetry from law reports,
such as this excerpt:
• Amelia was just fourteen and out of the
orphan asylum;
at her first job—in the bindery, and yes
sir, yes
ma'am, oh, so anxious to please.
She stood at the table, her blond hair
hanging about
her shoulders, "knocking up" for Mary
and Sadie,
the stichers ("knocking up" is counting
books and
stacking them in piles to be taken away).”
“Found poetry is a type of poetry created
by taking words, phrases, and sometimes
whole passages from other sources and
reframing them by making changes in
spacing and lines, or by adding or
deleting text, thus imparting new
meaning.”

20. Japanese forms
• “Gogyoshi (五行詩) is a style of Japanese poem
that consists of a title and five lines. ”
• “Gogyohka is a new form of short poem that is
based on the ancient Japanese Tanka and
Kodai kayo. Gogyohka has five lines, but
exceptionally may have four or six. Each line of
Gogyohka consists of one phrase with a line-break
after each phrase or breath. Gogyohka has no
restraint on numbers of words or syllables
• I was introduced to this form and its variations by
Taro Aizu on facebook. Robert Gilette encourages
Gogyokha.
• The poem on the next slide is by Taro Aizu and the
image is by Gloria Fey.
Haiku (three liner)
Haibun (prose and three liner)
Haiga (haiku and
image/picture/photograph)
Renku – “Renku (連句, "linked verses"),
or haikai no renga (俳諧の連歌, "comic
linked verse"), is a Japanese form of
popular collaborative linked verse poetry.
It is a development of the older Japanese
poetic tradition of ushin renga, or
orthodox collaborative linked verse.”
Senryu – “a 3-line unrhymed Japanese
poem structurally similar to haiku but
treating human nature usually in an ironic
or satiric vein.”
Tanka – “a Japanese poem in five lines
and thirty-one syllables, giving a
complete picture of an event or mood.”

23. The End
• Form, genre, structure, and all the decorations and
techniques in poetry all coalesce into one like husband
and wife and water and milk as well as strings and voice.
All these forms and many more exist to show that poetry
is not just free verse, semantic, and about imagery and
figures of speech only, as modernists try to strip it down
to, but a glass bead game that fascinates us by the
infinite combinations possible. In the course of trying
them out one sometimes writes a poem that is eternal
and never dies.
• There are many more forms like ekphrastic poetry based
on painting and photographs, blazon, one line poems,
concrete poetry, spatial poetry, and even film poetry
(poetry as film) and installation poetry now that I have no
time to go into. Maybe in the future I shall.
Nursery rhymes and parodies 

24. Thank you.