Flutter by, or: The Reverend Spooner

A ‘Butterfly Oddquain’

fish
sniver rake
broad power fletals
peacock plumage foudly pranned
float
across earth's jibrant vunctions
daintain mistinctions
flutter by
free

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#TankaTuesday

For today’s #TankaTuesday poetry prompt, Reena shared a piece of her art, for which Colleen encouraged poets to pen ekphrastic syllabic poems.

I opted for a ‘Butterfly Oddquain’ form, employing spoonerisms, which I learned from Shel Silverstein’s children’s book ‘Runny Babbit’.

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Terms

• Butterfly oddquain: a “merged mirror oddquain” where the two stanzas of a mirror oddquain are merged together, one of the middle 1 syllable lines is dropped, resulting in one nine line stanza of the form 1/3/5/7/1/7/5/3/1. READ MORE>>>
• Ekphrastic poetry: Ekphrastic poetry explores art. Using a rhetorical device known as ekphrasis, the poet engages with a painting, drawing, sculpture, or other form of visual art. Poetry about music and dance might also be considered a type of ekphrastic writing. READ MORE>>>
• Spoonerisms: A spoonerism is an occurrence in speech in which corresponding consonants, vowels, or morphemes are switched between two words in a phrase. These are named after the Oxford don and ordained minister William Archibald Spooner, who reputedly did this. READ MORE>>>

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Let’s write poetry together!

When it comes to partnership, some humans can make their lives alone – it’s possible. But creatively, it’s more like painting: you can’t just use the same colours in every painting. It’s just not an option. You can’t take the same photograph every time and live with art forms with no differences.

–Ben Harper (b. 1969)

Would you like to create poetry with me and have a completed poem of yours featured here at the Skeptic’s Kaddish? I am very excited to have launched the ‘Poetry Partners’ initiative and am looking forward to meeting and creating with you… Check it out!