EIF Poetry Challenge #13: Villanelle

Happy New Year, poetry lovers! I’m excited to begin a whole new year of poetry challenges by examining a lyrical, dance-like poetic form: the villanelle.

The form originated in France, though its name derives from the Italian villanella meaning ‘a rustic/peasant song or dance.’ It was originally a ballad-like pastoral poem with no fixed form, dating from the Middle Ages. It’s fixed form originates in the 17th-century poem “Villanelle (J’ay perdu ma Tourterelle)” by Jean Passerat, though many villanelles have since been composed in English.

The Villanelle Form

The form of the villanelle is fixed as follows:

• 19 lines in total, consisting of five stanzas.
• The first 5 stanzas are tercets (3 lines); the last is a quatrain (4 lines).
• The first and third lines of the first stanza alternate as endings to the next 4 stanzas.
• The final quatrain stanza concludes with the first and third lines of the first stanza.
• Rhyme scheme: ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA.

If this sounds a little complicated, it really isn’t once you take a look at some examples of the form.

Examples of the Villanelle Form

Perhaps the most famous villanelle poem of all is Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night.’ A rousing cry to go down fighting at the end of life:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

These lines feature prominently in Christopher Nolan’s epic sci-fi movie, Interstellar.

Some believe that the villanelle is the perfect form to give voice to the outsider, or those marginalised by society. Consider Sylvia Plath’s poem, ‘Mad Girl’s Love Song,’ which perhaps gives an insight into her experience with schizophrenia:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

But this could also be a metaphor for any love we create within our own minds which turns out to be unrequited:

I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I stuck with the theme of unrequited love when composing my own villanelle ‘His hands make light work of my dreams.’

The Challenge

Write a formal villanelle on any subject. Please stick to the form as described/illustrated above. You can find many more examples of the form online: in fact, there are some great examples right here on WordPress.

You can enter in any of the following ways:

• Write a blog post featuring your villanelle and link back to this post. Please mention the EIF Poetry Challenge in your post.
• Email your entry to experimentsinfiction@protonmail.com.
• Tweet a link to your poem tagging @Experimentsinfc.
• Post your poem to Instagram tagging @experimentsinfiction.

The deadline for entries is midnight C.E.T. on Tuesday, 12 January. This week’s Challenge will be judged by Elizabeth Gauffreau, winner of the Christmas Poetry Challenge.