Are you still finding yourself in that warm wonderful hopeful place from the transfer of leadership in America this week? And also maybe, like me, still wowed by how wonderful The Hill We Climb is?

While I am of course referring to Amanda Gorman’s powerful performance and her poem itself, it can also mean those hills each of us are climbing. Our lives, the goals we set for ourselves at the beginning of each year (or periodically): aren’t all of these our own personal wonderful hills to climb?! What do you think?

Anyway, Gorman’s The Hill We Climb led me to look for poetic forms with internal rhymes; and there are so many out there. I picked one – simply because of its length (which will allow me to make time for myself to actually come up with an example in today’s Poetic Sundays post:-))

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Poetic Sundays

Awdl Gywydd

Poetic explorations take me to Wales this week as I bring to you the awdl gywydd. As I read about Welsh (and even Irish) poetic forms, I realized and relished the presence of all those rhymes; the end rhymes, cross rhymes, internal rhymes, and more. There are twenty-four traditional poetic formats attributed to Welsh literature, and there were even more before our current list was compiled in the Late Middle Ages, when some formats were omitted. 

While I would like to pronounce it something closer to ‘all good,’ because poetry does make me feel so, this is actually pronounced “owdl gow-widd.”

So what is the Awdl Gywydd poetry form?

The awdl gywdd is a 4-line syllabic form with an interlaced rhyme scheme. Each quatrain (4-line stanza) is made up of seven-syllable lines. Lines two and four end-rhyme, while lines one and three rhyme into any of the second through fifth syllables of lines two and four.

The Awdl Gywydd’s Characteristics

So the awdl gywydd’s elements are that it is (at its minimum):

• a quatrain: 4 line stanza (can have more than quatrain, if the poet desires)
• syllabic: 7 syllables per line
• rhymed: a — (a)b — c — (c)b , where the letters in bracket indicate internal rhymes in the second and fourth lines.

And this is how it looks:

• L1 – seven syllable line – xxxxxxa
• L2 – seven syllable line – xaxxxxb or xxaxxxb or xxxaxxb or xxxxaxb
• L3 – seven syllable line – xxxxxxc
• L4 – seven syllable line – xcxxxxb or xxcxxxb or xxxcxxb or xxxxcxb

Play With the Form

Well, you can keep adding on to it with more quatrains; based on what I have seen across the WWW, the end rhyming changes with each new quatrain (abcb, defe, ghih,,,, and so on). Note that I have not included those internal rhymes here, for simplicity’s sake!

h/t: Writer’s Digest, The Poets Garret

My Example

Well, not really mine this week though I mentioned I picked a shorter form to be able to write an example poem… this one is my daughter’s… her first attempt

Rain…
Raining cats and dogs outside
Clouds have cried, giving showers
to all the pretty green things
What joy raining brings flowers
-sahana for vidya tiru @ ladyinreadwrites.com

Recently

On My Blog

Six days out of seven! And lots of reads to share in the process..

• Sunday Scribblings #56: The Story of One Power Cut
• 5 Picture Books That Will Easily Appeal
• Frank Zappa Said it Best – Top Ten Tuesday Post – the books we meant to read last year and did not
• Looking Up To Beautiful Spacious Skies: Inspiring Reads — Nonfiction Book Reviews — Books about inspiring people
• What is Good Government Anyway? — Nonfiction Book Reviews — Books about government
• 4 Wonderful Reads About Events from American History — — Nonfiction Book Reviews — Books about events

And the Home Front

Oh, well, like so many around the US, and even around the world, I was and am still wowed by how wonderful The Hill We Climb is.. and even more, how amazing, Amanda Gorman’s reading, nah, performance, was!! I watched the inauguration and had many a “goosebumpy” moment throughout (in a nice way, of course)..What about you??

Other than that, this week turned out to be the same as others.

Elsewhere On the Web

More Gorman

• Loved this post on The Hill We Climb(WellandGood.com)
• Totally enjoyed reading another poem by her titled In This Place (Poets.org)

Upcoming

On My Blog and Home Front

Cybils nominees reviews will continue this week (one last push to finish as many as I can!) and a couple for recent reads. The home-front, well, things are going to be the same as ever.. .

This Week’s Celebrations

For this week, here are a few I wanted to mention…

The Days

• January 25th National Irish Coffee Day, National Opposite Day
• January 26th – National Green Juice Day, National Peanut Brittle Day, and National Spouses Day
• 27th January National Chocolate Cake Day
• Jan 28 – National Blueberry Pancake Day
• 29th is National Corn Chip Day, National Puzzle Day
• Jan 30th is National Croissant Day
• 31st National Backward Day, National Hot Chocolate Day, and National Inspire Your Heart With Art Day

Literary Celebrations

• January 25th birthdays: Robert Burns, W Somerset Maugham,  Virginia Woolf 
• 26th January is  Jules Feiffer‘s birthday
• Lewis Carroll was born on the 27th of January
• Library Shelfie Day – Fourth Wednesday in January
• And January 29th is Multicultural Children’s Book Day!

Wrapping up my Sunday Scribblings

So dear reader, this was it for my Sunday Scribblings. I would love to hear your comments on my post(s), poetic Sunday section, and anything else. And which of these days do you plan to celebrate (or any other)? Also, I do look forward to reading your poems (if you have attempted one or the other forms so far?!) 

Linking this to the Sunday Post over at the Caffeinated Reviewer and the Sunday Salon