Today, I thought it might be fun to share with you something that we do in school, with our students. By we, I mean my mentor and I, who are Croatian teachers, but it works in any language. This is a writing practice, or written expression exercise, and it’s quite simple but can give great and interesting results. It’s called the diamond poem, because the final result takes the shape of a diamond.
The task is to write a poem following these rules:
- First and the last line of the poem are two nouns, but of opposite meaning.
- Second line consists of two verbs that decribe the first noun, and the third line consists of three adjectives which describe the noun.
- The fourth line consists of any four words that connect the two nouns, or can be related to both.
- Next two lines consist of three adjectives and two verbs again, this time describing the other noun.
To make it simpler, it should look like this:
noun
verb verb
adjective adjective adjective
word word word word
adjective adjective adjective
verb verb
noun
Looks like a diamond, you see? 😉 Now, here’s my try at it. I chose love and indifference as the two opposite nouns to begin and end the poem with.
love
embraces smiles
warm soft changeable
passing time evanescent emotion
cold unexpected unstoppable
grabbs pains
indifference
So, what do you think? Would you like to try this form?
