The "Stick-it-to-the-PoLaur" Challenge

[LimeyDawg]

Since my time is drawing to a close here, I thought I would give you, the denizens of our poetry world, to issue a challenge to me, the current Poet Laureate of AW. (However, I still get to make the rules.) What we'll do is this: each of you posts a poetic challenge in this thread for the next three days (no more challenges after Thursday, midnight EST). Then we vote on the most excrutiating challenge, and I write a poem based on those parameters. The only limits are that it be less than 30 lines, so don't ask me to write an epic. However, you must include the following in your challenge: rhymed or not, metrical or not, the subject matter. That's it.

[poetinahat]

That is a brave challenge, sir. A suitable end to your happy, illuminating tenure as Poet Laureate.

My suggestion:

A poem in a form of your choosing, on things you'd do differently in the Forum, or that you're ambivalent about.

[P.H.Delarran]

Limey, your time as PL was so very inspiring, you have left a lot for us. I know I will be inspired for some time to come.
Knowing how you throw yourself into a challenge, I'd bet you gained the most from your term as PL. I challenge you to write a sonnet themed around your experience as PL.

[kdnxdr]

Here's mine:

The meaning of life as found in poetry, free form.

[MacAllister]

Hmm - Spenserian sonnet, about the nature of AW as a community?

[ddgryphon]

Englyn unodl crwc:
The crooked one-rhyme englyn. This englyn is made up of four lines of seven, seven, ten and six syllables. The last syllable of the first, second and last lines rhyme and seventh, eighth or ninth syllable of the third line all rhyme.

Two additional rules to the Englyn as modified here: 3 or more stanzas in Englyn form. The last syllable of the third line casts the larger rhyme of 1st, 2nd, and last line and 7th, 8th, or 9th syllable of the 3rd line of the next stanza.

Subject: Poetry

[LimeyDawg]

Man, I should have known better...sonnets, Englyns, on the subject of life or AW...intresting stuff...

[Priene]

A sonnet on the mechanisation of the Ukrainian wheatfields in the 1930s. It has to be simultaneously aggressive and tender, nostalgic and sexually explicit.

It must contain the following words: banana, flagrant, ennui and schism.
And it mustn't contain the following words: wheat, farm, farmer, peasant and tractor

[LimeyDawg]

A sonnet on the mechanisation of the Ukrainian wheatfields in the 1930s. It has to be simultaneously aggressive and tender, nostalgic and sexually explicit.

It must contain the following words: banana, flagrant, ennui and schism.
And it mustn't contain the following words: wheat, farm, farmer, peasant and tractor
My grandpa Petr wipes his teary eye
As fields of wheat stretch off toward the sky,
And on his dreams of youth he rides again
To meaner years of youth in old Ukraine.

When Olga stripped away the ennui
And peeled grandpa’s banana flagrantly
The fields hid the schism for a while,
His rubles and his jism for her smile.

The Slutsjka and her money earning ways,
Are memories of his youthful, randy days
When he would plough the dark and fertile ground,
And sink his seed when Olga made her rounds.

So don’t wake grandpa Petr from his nap,
And certainly do not sit on his lap.

[Priene]

schism for a while
jism for her smile


Now that is quality rhyming.

Maybe I made it too easy. How about...

A villanelle about a Dark Age monk dying of necrosis on an unhygienic Scottish island. He recalls his youth as a Mercian turnip merchant and debates methods for setting the date of Easter before lapsing into unconsciousness where he sees these visions of the future:

the War of the Spanish Succession
the discovery of vulcanism
the feud between Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls
the novel-writing 'career' of Katie Price

And all lines have to start with the letter 'B'

[LimeyDawg]

Now that is quality rhyming.

Hey, you asked for tender, I delivered...sheeesh, lol.

[LimeyDawg]

Okay here it is. Not brillant, but it is what it is. Thanks to everybody for putting up with me for the past three months.

The AW Sonnet

If you can leech the color from the coal
of words, then you’ve a poet in your soul,
if you’ve an eye for subtle, sensuous rhyme,
you’ve brush enough for greatness in your time.
Perhaps you will not set the skies afire
with words that wear the hue of your desire,
your lines may never paint the published page,
nor earn your brow the laurel of the sage.
But there’s a place where silence finds a song,
and words are coin to join the writer’s throng,
just bring a pinch of salt, an inch of skin,
and thanks to pay the critics for their sting.
So paint your heart for all around to see
on canvassed walls of our community.

[P.H.Delarran]

Oh Limey-that's wonderful!
It should be the intro to our crit forum :)
thank you for all you've done here.

[Teena]

The AW Sonnet

If you can leech the color from the coal
of words, then you’ve a poet in your soul,
if you’ve an eye for subtle, sensuous rhyme,
you’ve brush enough for greatness in your time.
Perhaps you will not set the skies afire
with words that wear the hue of your desire,
your lines may never paint the published page,
nor earn your brow the laurel of the sage.
But there’s a place where silence finds a song,
and words are coin to join the writer’s throng...

______________________

"....there's a place where silence finds a song..." Now THAT is poetry!! Beeeeeeeutiful!!!! Great job, Limey. :Hail: