30 day poetry challenge!

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Poetryforyou

5 min readMar 15, 2021

A couple of days ago, I was given an assignment in class: write a poem combining the styles of Chanson III, Rhymes by Permette de Guillet and one of the poems from Ronsard’s collection “Amours de Cassandre”. Both are famous French poets (note: for those of you who didn’t know, I live in France). De Guillet uses rather soft, gentle words and focuses on expressing her sadness, while Ronsard is a lot more aggressive, blaming Cassandre for his misery. He also uses metaphors inspired by Greek mythology, for example comparing Cassandre to Medusa, while de Guillet prefers to keep it simple. I had to write from de Guillet’s point of view but using Ronsard’s very sophisticated and aggressive tone (I got full marks, incidentally :)). That got me thinking: what would happen if I wrote a poem — more specifically, a sonnet — every day for a month? From now, Thursday 11th March 2021 until Sunday 11th April, I shall write a sonnet every single day. I may not be able to post one every day, but I will definitely write one and post it on Medium when possible. At the end, I shall provide you with a sonnet cheat-sheet and a couple of handy tips. Sound good? Let’s go….

What is a Sonnet?

A sonnet is a fixed poetic form with 14 lines. There are some variants, but they all have a strict rhyming scheme and a “volta” at the end. A volta is a surprising twist. For instance, in Shakespeare’s sonnet 130, he compares his mistress unfavourably to nature: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;” but in the last two lines, he says he couldn’t care less about that and loves her anyway: “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare.” Sonnets also have a very strict meter, usually 10 or 12 syllables, that stays the same throughout the poem.

My method

Determine rhyme scheme: For my first poem, I decided to go for a classic sonnet rhyming scheme: ABBAABBACCDEED. The letters correspond to a sound, so line A rhymes with line A, B with B, etc.
Determine number of syllables per line: I decided to go for the iambic pentameter, which is a fancy way of saying 10-syllable lines.
Find a subject: This is my first sonnet, so I’ll go with love: there are so many bad love poems out there that one more won’t make a difference! ;)
Find a metaphor: I decided to use the myth of Prometheus as inspiration. For those of you who don’t know, Prometheus, according to Greek mythology, was a Titan who gave fire to humans. This angered the Gods, who attached him to a rock and had a bird eat his liver. Because he was immortal, it grew back, so the bird cam back again. And again. And again… Here, love would be represented by fire, my “Cassandre” would be Prometheus, and the humans would be her lover and I would be a God (good to see that teenage narcissism is starting to fade away…)

The vast majority of my poems are “irregular” sonnets, that sometimes don’t have a rhyming scheme or even a strict meter.

EDIT : Here are my poems so far:

30 day poetry challenge: day 1. A couple of days ago, I was given an… | by Everything you need to know | Mar, 2021 | Medium

30 day poetry challenge: day 2. The storm | by Everything you need to know | Mar, 2021 | Medium

30 day poetry challenge, day 3 — Everything you need to know — Medium

30 day poetry challenge, day 4. Imagine | by Everything you need to know | Mar, 2021 | Medium

30 day poetry challenge: day 5. I am me | by Everything you need to know | Mar, 2021 | Medium

30 day poetry challenge: day 6. Sonnet no. 5 | by Everything you need to know | Mar, 2021 | Medium

30 day poetry challenge: day 7. Ruby Bridges | by Everything you need to know | Mar, 2021 | Medium

30 day poetry challenge: day 8. Lockdown | by Everything you need to know | Mar, 2021 | Medium

30 day poetry challenge, day 9 — Everything you need to know — Medium

30 day poetry challenge, day 10 — Everything you need to know — Medium