I’m thrilled to be included in a new publication out now in print from Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Capital Queer: A Pride Celebration is a collection of poetry and prose from queer Washington, DC area writers. Included (on page 12) is my very first villanelle!- “A Villanelle for Lost Quiltbaggers.”
According to poets.org… “The villanelle is a highly structured poem made up of five tercets followed by a quatrain, with two repeating rhymes and two refrains. The first and third lines of the opening tercet are repeated alternately in the last lines of the succeeding stanzas; then in the final stanza, the refrain serves as the poem’s two concluding lines. Using capitals for the refrains and lowercase letters for the rhymes, the form could be expressed as: A1 b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 / a b A2 / a b A1 A2.”
I’ll admit it took me quite a while to understand the formula, then a while longer to write something that both followed the formula and had meaning. I have great respect for poets who write in any structured form! Writing in form is a really great exercise for me to stretch my skills and grow as a poet. Thanks to a course from The Writer’s Center on the villanelle with poet and teacher, Claudia Gary, I had a nice introduction to get me going. And it turned into a published piece!
I hope everyone reading this considers purchasing Capital Queer – available for sale everywhere books are sold, including here.
marks in the sand 