[Vision2020] Sestina Party!

Bill London london at moscow.com
Fri Apr 20 11:19:56 PDT 2012


April is National Poetry Month, and a sestina is a type of poem that is 
fun for a group of people to write together.  Come to BookPeople of 
Moscow on Wednesday, April 25 at 7pm and write a sestina with friends, 
old and new.

You can sign up by contacting BookPeople, either in person or on 
Facebook.  Or by responding to nancy at turbonet.com

More info:
This is a get-together for people who like to play around with words.  
The general idea is to parcel out the work of writing a poem, then put 
the pieces together and see what you've got.  Everyone will be part of a 
team.

A sestina is a poem that has six stanzas.  In each of the six stanzas, 
the same six words appear at the end of each line.  And in each stanza, 
the six words are in a different order.  So we will divide into 6 teams, 
and each team will write a six-line stanza.

The actual nitty-gritty (which you can ignore now if you just want to 
show up and follow directions):
Each team will submit one word so we have 6 words to start with.  Each 
team will be told what order the words have to appear in their stanza.  
Then the teams sequester themselves to write the stanza.  Then we come 
back together and put the stanzas together to see what kind of a poem we 
have written.  The repetition of the six words will help make it all 
connected somehow.

The sestina is capped off with a final stanza of only 3 lines that 
trundles all the words together twice as fast as in the rest of the 
poem.  We can write that together while we enjoy how clever and 
brilliant we are.

A sample of a sestina:  http://www.authornancycasey.com/?p=253
Even more info:  http://www.authornancycasey.com/?p=176

Sign up for the Sestina Party at BookPeople (Weds, Apr 25, 7pm) by 
contacting BookPeople in person or on Facebook, or by emailing 
nancy at turbonet.com




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