All entries for Thursday 21 July 2005

Thursday – hang of got.

I used to hate thursdays – the combination of double history with a paper round can't have helped. Not so today! On one of those good days that involve not going to work, I have spent the morning trying to work out how to do a four-line sestina. Shorter. Easier. I hope.
Having fueled this great effort with left over curry from a fun evening previous, and some stewed peppermint tea, I have got as far as downloading a picture of a bathroom tile from the web, and opening and closing Hearts a lot. Damn that black queen, following me around…

England are doing strangely well in the Ashes. Ah, bbc website…

Ok – traditional sestina is a six line poem where you re-use the last word of each line shuffled in a particular order, so that you end up with six sixline verse, ending with a verse of three lines containing all the words. The shuffling is done by starting the second verse with the last line of the first verse, followed by the first line as the second, the fifth line as the third etc. (I wrote an exel spreadsheet to do all that bit for me. Both lazy AND geeky).

The four line version will be the same, only shorter, fewer verses, and less complication – verses will go ABCD, DACB, BDCA, BA/CD. Simple!
Now I just need to find four good words…

: 21 Jul 2005 12:45 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem