Can't say the title sounds that appetising with all those technical terms in it. Nevertheless I plough on with one quatrain of anapaestic hexameters which for those of you who are interested means a di di dum beat and six of them in a line.
The exercise was to write a quatrain of such lines as directions to one's house. Since I'm not about to place a set of directions to my house online, I've written a set of directions which will hopefully take one from my office to the nearest Catholic Church.
At the end, Merah Saga, turn right at the lights. Again Right. Up the slope
To the T, a third right. Go on past all those flats. Filter left at the cross
Farrer Road. At the lights midway down go on left. Empress Road
Old Market so go past. No, it's not the white spire on your right. Instead look
Straight ahead and you'll see. There she stands: new St Ig's, looms above.
And the second half of writing metres was to write a quatrain of dactylic pentameter ending with spondees at the end of each line.
Stopping for a Cow crossing the road:
First one I saw as a child was on route up to Penang.
Still so she stood on the road. She was muddy, bedraggled
Queen though she strolled on across as her hooves did go clip clop
Forced so, we waited, ablare was our horn and we wooshed past.
The second exercise was slightly more enjoyable to write...clearly I like cows more than I like giving directions. Fortunately we take a pause from stressed syllable counting in the next exercise as we move to alliterative beats instead.
2 comments:
The second exercise gives far more, um poetic licence than the first. That's why it is more fun. I felt very constrained by road names in the first exercise.
Yes, I felt the same too...most road names just don't fit into that meter. I have to say I liked your directions though and after having done mine, yours was really a good effort now that I know how hard it was!
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