Writing the Perfect Beast #34
Have we seen the birth of a new poetic form…?
Starting in October 2025, I decided to talk honestly about the business of how I write poetry. There are people who teach how to create poetry, how to format it, how to submit and how publishing in general, works. I am not seeing that many people shining a light on what you need to do with your brain and mental attitudes to make all of that knowledge stick, grow and then evolve. HI THERE.
On what now becomes a new, regular on Sunday post, LET'S GET SERIOUS.
Writing to a brief can be a bit of a stressful situation for a lot of people. I know this because I have been told this by enough of them for it to always come as a surprise. I LOVE detail. However, occasionally a brief comes along that stumps me. We’ll talk about that in a later newsletter, after acknowledging that the PERFECT ‘write 12 lines’ prompt for ADHD/Neurodiverse poets exists, and this is it:
The reason WHY this works will also be presented in list form (because that seems like the appropriate response in itself:
- Line length specified at the outset. Fail that and you may as well go home ^^
- You only have to do one thing to complete each section of the task (one term, one object, one new word etc)
- It asks you to suspend logic to complete it (made up word, abstract image)
- It forces you to create a pivot at the last line (which is never a bad thing in a poem, and should be encouraged).
I’m so enamoured with this style/approach that I think Paul should be pushing to introduce this as an actual new style of poetry. I dunno what he’d like to name it but I’m willing to suggest this as the Wombwell Rainbow form. What it did for me on a Monday where I was literally waist deep in a project I hope to complete today, was focus my mind on what we often forget is an intractable in poetry.
However clever or smart or incisive we feel our work is, there is always space to grow. Projects Like #PromptCombo on BlueSky create their own mini poetry communities and connect people. However, few of them are as exacting with their briefs and end goals as Paul was with this last week. To complete this requires more than simply thought. You can’t just share an old poem that sort of fits.
You need to go and make it happen from scratch for it to be successful.
I cheat with using ‘scientific term’ as the title, which is already pushing the precision a bit, but the rest I am very proud of… and using my own desire to literally write what I see (with the revelation that provides) gives me only 8 lines to do the rest of the work. Contrareality is, I have decided, the view of existence you use to stop yourself going insane when the World is actually on fire.
You can use that in a sentence today with my blessing, plus (if you are aware of the Backrooms genre) please feel free to consider that your Greggs Sausage Roll could easily become a wormhole to nothing if your imagination was willing. Anything can be anything in a poem. NEVER FORGET THIS. Then there’s the last line, imagining that maybe your notebook is also a key player in a Japanese manga…
Sometimes, other poets need to push you out of those comfort zones.
Paul works really hard at his poetry, something I have nothing but respect for, because I know how that works. You do the hours to stay sane, and to move forward. He’s been responsible for some key developments in my own poetic journey too, so this whole post is a thank you to him, in perpetuity, for giving so much and continuing to turn up every day to do so.
The best poetry often occurs as a result of participative experiences. There are amazing things being done, up and down the country, online and in person, to help you write better poetry. This is your scheduled reminder that you are only one decision away from potentially changing your entire poetry journey by doing the hard thing. DO THE HARD THING. Get out of your comfort zone today.
I’ve learnt a lot from pushing the envelope, and you can too.
