It’s wonderful how, throughout my writing career, I am learning new ideas and tips and gaining knowledge of exciting, inspirational ways to nurture my creativity.
Recently, I found out about cinquain poetry. It is similar to haiku and tanka, but it has five lines. It can be written about anything you like, with an emphasis on the syllable sounds of the words. It was invented by Adelaide Crapsey, an American poet, in the nineteenth century. The cinquain form has been used in other ways by Raymond Luber (1976) who adopted it for use in therapeutic work and bibliotherapy. He used the following format:
Content Length
Line 1 – noun 1 word
Line 2 – Describes the title 2 words
Line 3 – Action words or phrased about the title 3 words
Line 4 – A feeling about the title 4 words
Line 5 – Refers to the title 1 word
It can of course be adapted for writing for wellbeing and/or creative writing. I had a go at doing this very quickly for fun. The following two poems are the result:
Spring
April, May
Buds are opening
With sun, showers, birdsong
Light.
Earth
Our life-blood
Digging, sowing, planting
Seeds, growing, birth, death,
Grounding.
As you can see, this is very simple, just writing what came to me as I was preparing my “Planting the heart’s inner garden” workshop. It has given me wonderful prompts for writing. Cinquain poetry can work as a prompt to assist me in my fiction writing too when I’m brainstorming as I can use nouns of any given subject or situation I want to write about. Not tried it in that context yet but may well do and see what happens!
Luber, Raymond (1976) in Hynes and Hynes-Berry, (eds.), Biblio/Poetry Therapy: The Interactive Process, A Handbook., Third Edition, (2012), North Star Press, USA.