History: An Englyn is a traditional Welsh and Cornish short poetry form. It has been found in the earliest Welsh literature, from the 5th century AD, and the earliest were found written in the margins in a tenth century Juvencus Manuscript. Although there is speculation that it’s creation can be sourced in Latin poetry and...Read More

History: The Bina is a contemporary form attributed to Bob Newman when he decided to do like recipe books do with chicken, and find 5 ways to cook a sestina. This is one of the ways. Other ways is a ‘Newman Sestina’ and a ‘Quartina’. Structure: 5 lines total lines follow the general meter and...Read More

History: The Allitersen is an invented form (can we discuss for a second the absurdity of that term? What, were ballades created by the Big Bang along with the rocks and the platypus?) created by Udit Bhatia and debuted on Shadow Poetry. Structure: The Allitersen actually seems more complicated than it is, due to the...Read More

History: Biku is a poetry form, called by Hadas a “poetic mechanism”, similar to a haiku, created by Eran Hadas in 2014 inspired by and in honor of Tanya Reinhart’s (linguist, activist and “one of Noam Chomsky’s favorite PHD students”) explanation that “each media item could (and should) be have a threefold reaction. We should...Read More

History: One of four types of Cywydd, a Welsh metrical form originating in the 14th century, and one of three predominant Welsh metrical forms, the other two being the Awdl, and the Englyn. The other three forms of Cywydd, as listed by Einion Offeiriad around 1320, are Cywydd Deuair Birion, Cywydd Deuair Fryion, and Cywydd...Read More

History: The Aubade, which as a word means “dawn serenade”, first dates back to the 12th century and came to be known to English speakers in the 1670s. It is theorized by some scholars that it grew out of the cry of the medieval watchman announcing the change from night to day from his tower....Read More

History: The Asefru, plural being Isefra (as in “I wrote an Asefru, but my friend Bill showed me up and wrote two Isefra”), is, according to common western understanding, a poetry form of the Berber people, or i-Mazigh-en(singular: a-Mazigh) of Kabylia, a Berberophone area of Algeria. However, this understanding is to be taken with a grain of...Read More

History: The Qasida is an Pre-Islamic poetry genre/form from developed in Arabia oral tradition in the 6th century rooted in the Bedouin cycles of nomadic desert life, and spread throughout it’s historical life into wild varying contexts throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia. It is often defined as an ode, has a strict and...Read More

History: According to the internet (these contemporary invented forms are really hard to find the story of), the Atarlis Fileata is a contemporary invented form, invented by Cathy Bollhoefer. Atarlis Fileata is Gaelic for “repeating poetic” although the poem form itself does not follow the standards of old traditional Celtic Forms. Structure: 7-line poem measured...Read More

History: This one took some digging. The Argonelle is an invented was created many years ago by Sylvia Argow of the New York Poetry Forum in the 1970s. Structure: This was a hard poem to track down. The usual websites, who all cite each other and don’t give any other sources and admit to not...Read More