Kate's Blog

Follow me if you will as I try to navigate through the ups and downs of my world.

I'm writing this blog to help me make sense of all that has happened - from my diagnosis with non-Hodgkins lymphoma while pregnant with my third child in May 2008
, through to my reflections on chaotic family life as I try to pick up the pieces of my life again.


The kids are so small, and I'm working hard to keep us all safe and to stay in remission.

Stay with me - it won't be all doom and gloom I promise!



Monday 15 November 2010

De Duh De Duh... De-Duh

I've started another writing course at the university here in Newcastle. It's full of confident people discussing the merits of the iambic meter. Hmmmm. And now I have to write a poem for Thursday. Why do I do these things?

7 comments:

Vince said...

You'd wonder about people using greek metre for a germanic language, still.
It's one hell of a lot easier to crack out a poem when you've a prefix root and suffix. It's such a pity one cannot use a stave, it really would help.

Anita said...

Okay Kate and Vince, I'll admit it. I had to go to Google for some definitions. LOL

EnJoy your class!

Tracey said...

Hey, Anita, I'm with you. Can you e-mail me and tell me what a stave is?

I know what iambic pentameter is but I don't know why one must be constrained by it.

And you do this because it is for you, and you need to do something for you. Honestly, you owe it to those three kids to nurture yourself as well.

Happy rhyming, or whatever. :)

Rebecca S. said...

Just rip something off from Shakespeare. They'll never know :)

Vince said...

Poetry is seen as one of the endeavors that lifts us from the muck. And it isn't that iambic pentameter constrains so much as you are constraining the words to that order. Or an animals grunts to something higher.
Nor need it be in iambic pentameter, but that lends itself to English. At least it lends itself better than others. However in English, because you are using a foot/beat/meter that really belonging to Greek then to Latin where Shakespeare got it. It is very stilted, and even more so when one speaks poems in the Received Pronunciation/Oxbridge/London or south-east England accent of our hostess.
When you hear the Poems of Horace spoken by someone that has Latin they become Carmina or songs. Think Rap spoken by an Oxford Don.


A Stave is the lines on sheet music which control the thing.

Thriving rebel said...

sounds great. I'd love to do a writing course. Your book will be published in no time and I very much look forward to reading it!!

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