Sestets for starters: N M Browne

 I was at the pub in late August with some poet friends berating my lack of creative direction, as I am inclined to do when one of them told me about his personal project to post a 'triadic couplet' a day to social media. Any hint of a challenge and I'm hooked, so I've been writing a six line poem a day ever since. The form is simple, but flexible. There have to be three couplets and rhyme, rhythm, line length is entirely up to you. They are horribly addictive.

It’s something I would recommend to anyone in the creative doldrums. Six lines isn’t very much and, as I have imposed no quality control, there is no real pressure to write anything ‘good': I have no poetry reputation to trash. 

That said, I’ve been both embarrassed and pleasantly surprised when friends  have told me they are enjoying them. Part of me thinks I would have spent more time on them, if I'd thought people would read them, the more grown up part  reminds myself that no one forced me to foist half-formed thoughts onto innocent friends scrolling through social media!  Of course, I could write them and not share them but the fact that they are read (albeit by a very small number of people) makes a private game a creative 'project,' and reaffirms my writer's compulsive exhibitionism.

I suppose the exercise is a little like writing daily pages only shorter: a five finger exercise for the brain. Because I often write them in the morning rather too many relate to sleep and dreaming, or, following a cursory reading of the paper, reflect my fury with contemporary politics. Some are throw away thoughts:

Only babies slumber

we adults merely sleep.

They, curled as ammontes

cocooned within phantasmic wombs,

slip back into amniotic dreams

small aliens recalling home.

 

Some are definitely autobiographical: 

I hoped that motivated leopards 

might change their spots with work.

At the gym, a picked-last girl, I try

to be another me, sporty, nimble, 

bold, till I pratfall on the treadmill,

graze my knee: old spots show still.

And that  element is challenging. As a fantasy writer nothing I write has much to do with me at all, but these poems posted on a personal page suggest the confessional even when they are as made up as my werewolf stories. 

After a couple of my darker offerings kind friends have messaged to make sure I am OK. 

 In days when I achieve little, it is satisfying to say: well, at least I wrote a poem. On the other hand perhaps creative-me shouldn’t be so easily satisfied. Should I stop these six line tasters and start a new book? How many limbering up exercises is too many? 

I don’t know, so, for now, if you are interested you can find them  @n_m_browne on Instagram and https://www.facebook.com/365poems  

Or join me in a daily triadic couplet served with a writer’s pick me up of black coffee and dark chocolate?