Poetic Form 60: Byr a Thoddaid

 

Write Life

Write a new story. Let this end.

Fill the spaces with verbs, offend

those who want to see the antagonist

be first to raise a flag.

Your days are written with the ink

from the well of your soul. Unlink

the earlier chapters from your plotline.

It’s fine, write a detour.

Adjectives, metaphors connect

the real world with your heart, perfect.

Hear your voice, loud, in the punctuation!

Salvation is words, too.

Let your hands rush across the space

between blue lines. Set the pace

of living with paragraphs, not just words.

Edit towards a breath sought.

Write a new story. One that twist

and turns with emotion. Resist

penning a happy-ever-after line.

Untwine your forever.

Poetic Form #60 Byr a Thoddaid

The byr a thoddaid is a Welsh form. The rules are a little complicated. A byr a thoddaid 

poem can be a quatrain (4-line stanza) or series of quatrains. The quatrain is divided into

two combined couplets. One couplet is written with 8 syllables for each line. The lines 

have an AA end rhyme. The other couplet contains 10 syllables in the first line and 6 syllables

in the second. The 10-syllable line has an end rhyme near the end of the line. The 6-syllable

line has a link (rhyme, alliteration, etc.) to the end word of the 10-syllable line and then an 

end rhyme. The couplets can appear in alternating order.

A visual of the form looks like this:

xxxxxxxA

xxxxxxxA

xxxxxxxBxc

xcxxxB