For this week and next, I will be writing some pantoum poems which were inspired by the African Writers Development Trust theme for this year’s conference. The African identity, but before then, here’s a little about what pantoum is.
The pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a villanelle in that there are repeating lines throughout the poem. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first. The pattern continues for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern. The first and third lines of the last stanza are the second and fourth of the penultimate; the first line of the poem is the last line of the final stanza, and the third line of the first stanza is the second of the final. Ideally, the meaning of lines shifts when they are repeated although the words remain exactly the same: this can be done by shifting punctuation, punning, or simply recontextualizing.
A four-stanza pantoum is common (although more may be used), and in the final stanza, lines one and three from the first stanza can be repeated, or new lines can be written. The pantoum form is as follows:[1]
Stanza 1
A
B
C
D
Stanza 2
B
E
D
F
Stanza 3
E
G
F
H
Stanza 4
G
I (or A or C)
H
J (or A or C)
PPBlessing 