Poetic Forms: Contronyms

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to week eight of poetic forms, where every week I introduce a different type of poem and invite you to give it a go! As an added incentive to take part, the best poem every week is featured on the Writing Gooder blog on Sunday afternoon, alongside a brief analysis by myself.

To enter a poem, make sure it’s written in this week’s style and then either post a link to it in a comment below, or post the full text of the poem.

This week we’re doing something a bit different and what I have for you is a very open challenge and more of a writing prompt than a writing form! I want you to write a poem inspired by contronyms. If you’ve not heard the term before, a contronym is a word with two opposing definitions, such as bolt. In the first instance, bolt means to secure – did you bolt the door? Yes, I have bolted the door. However, it also means to flee – the dog has bolted.

Instead of an example poem this week, I have for you a reference list of 75 contronyms and your challenge is to write a poem which uses at least one contronym. The poem must make use of both meanings of the word, so to take the example above, you might have:

Even though I bolted the door,

the dog bolted.

You can use contronyms from the list linked above, or research a few of your own. I’ll be very impressed by anyone who gets five or more of them into a single poem but one is enough to pass the challenge. I hope you have fun with this, I know I will!

Good luck everyone.

** Image owned by Enokson at Flickr.