The Villanelle of the show

Hone your editing skills with this villanelle poetry prompt

Photo by yeongkyeong lee on Unsplash

Thanks to subscriber Terry for inspiring this month’s writing prompt. Today we’re writing villanelles.

Structured forms in poetry are far more than simply a fancy way of showing off your skills. Used well, a structured form enhances the content of a poem.

This is perhaps the golden rule of poetry - content over form. There is no point in having a beautiful puzzle of a poem if it loses the poem somewhere inside it and fails to connect to the reader. So why bother wrapping a poem up in something a complex and old fashioned as a villanelle? Here are some ways in which a repeating form can enhance the content of your poem, and a top competition entering tip…