5 Queer Poets Who Invented (or Reinvented) Poetic Form
Writing in poetic form can add an extra challenge, point of intrigue, or layer of depth to a poem. For some, writing in form can feel like solving a puzzle: all the pieces lie flat on the table, but each puzzle solver manipulates and maneuvers the pieces in their own unique way, leading to infinite results.
When Writer's Digest first blogged about poetic forms in 2014, they included 50 different forms for poets to explore. Now the list includes 168 forms, and it could probably be updated again since the latest version was posted in March 2021. Before we get into a few of our favorites invented by Queer poets, let's first understand what "form" actually means.
What is a poetic "form"?
When it comes down to bare bones, a poetic "form" is simply a set of constraints put on a poem. These constraints can vary from how many syllables are in each line to the physical shape the poem makes on the page. Constraints can affect the rhyme scheme, metrical pattern, or the use of repetition in a poem. Even simply the subject matter can be a constraint that leads to a poetic form.
A common example is the traditional English sonnet (think Shakespeare's "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" in Sonnet 18). This form uses the constraints of iambic pentameter over the course of three quatrains and a single couplet while following the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. However, the form has seen a modern renaissance with many poets taking these constraints and throwing them out the window, reinventing the form to fit their intentions for their poem instead of the other way around. Diane Seuss whose collection, frank: sonnets, won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize, for example, uses neither rhyme scheme nor meter in a single one of the 127 sonnets included in the collection.
So let's discover how some modern, Queer poets have incorporated their own takes on poetic form into their work:
1) Duplex
One of the poetic trends filling up pages in literary magazines in recent years is Jericho Brown's "Duplex." The form consists of 14 lines, arranged in couplets. The first line of the couplet repeats words/phrases verbatim or closely related to the previous line. For the last couplet, the last line repeats the very first line. As Brown described it in an article for The Poetry Foundation, a "Duplex" is "a ghazal that is also a sonnet that is also a blues poem of 14 lines." He came up with the name "Duplex" because "something about its repetition and its couplets made me feel like it was a house with two addresses."
Read➡️ Duplex (I Begin With Love) first published in The American Poetry Review.
2) Hangul Abecedarian
In her poetic form, the "Hangul Abecedarian," Queer poet Franny Choi, takes the abecedarian form–a poem of 26 lines, each beginning with a letter of the alphabet in the traditional sequence–and adapts it to Hangul, the Korean alphabet.
When comparing her Hangul Abecedarian published in Poetry in December 2019 with the one published in Poem-a-Day in May 2020, we can observe some slight differences between the initial letters of each line. The constraint placed on this kind of abecedarian, then, lies not in the specific letter, but rather the specific sound.
3) Burning Haibun
Trans poet torrin a. greathouse also put a spin on a more traditional form, reinventing it into their own.
A "Haibun" is a Japanese form of a prose poem followed by a haiku. In a Tweet from May 2019, torrin explains that their form the "Burning Haibun" is "[e]ssentially… a prose poem that erases itself, then erases the erasure to create a haiku." Instead of containing two parts–a prose poem and haiku– the Burning Haibun contains three parts–a prose poem, an erasure of the prose poem into a second prose poem and an erasure into a haiku. Confused? Check out this example first published in Frontier Poetry in 2017.
4) Colonial Fit
Queer, nonbinary poet, Noor ‘Ditee Jaber combines the two languages of their family origins–Arabic and English–to create the "Colonial Fit," a poem in which the English language is written while employing the grammatical rules of Arabic. About this form Noor said in an interview with Vida, "[English and Arabic] are incompatible, but they both belong in my mouth; I’m a Black person and an Arab; my mother’s side of the family all speak English and my father’s side speaks Arabic. The result of fitting the two languages into a single space is uncomfortable, and it should be."
A result of this discomfort between the two languages is the brilliant piece "questions arabic asked in english" first published on The Rumpus in 2019.
5) The Dipper
Ok! I can't help myself! I, too, a Queer poet, invented my own poetic form! I call it "The Dipper," and it was first published in Platform Review in 2022.
The form consists of a quatrain, a couplet and a single word followed by the inverse: a single word, a couplet, and a quatrain. The exact same words that appear in the top section are repurposed in the bottom section. The form mimics the shapes of the big and little dippers—constellations with significant meaning to my family. As far as I know, this is the only Dipper in existence in the world, but if it's not, and you wrote a Dipper, I'd love to read it!
Create Your Own
The only thing left to do now is to invent (or re-invent) a form of your own. Will you find inspiration from the repetitive nature of the Duplex? Explore language in unique ways like in the Hangul Abecedarian or Colonial Fit? Will you add erasure to a traditional form like with the Burning Haibun? Will you accept the challenge of piecing the exact same words together in two different ways like with The Dipper? Or maybe you're inspired by something else completely!
Have you already invented or re-invented a form of your own? Tell us about it below for the chance to see you and your form spotlighted on our social media! We're eager to learn about what you've created!
This article was posted on March 1, 2023. Written by:
