Clogyrnach & Hiraeth
NovPAD 2024 • Days 29 & 30 • Plus Table of Contents
This month’s theme: “Where I Am: Poems of Place”
11/29 • Form Friday • Poet’s Pick [Clogyrnach]
In the time it takes to release a short-drawn breath and slowly cease your frenetic pace you may find the race can displace hopeful peace and resting gives you time to share the burden of your thoughts and cares with the one who bled and stood in our stead, never fled in despair.
Clogyrnach is a Welsh sestet form that follows an A/B rhyme scheme in each stanza with a variety of syllable counts per line. It flows like this:
8A / 8A / 5B / 5B / 3B / 3A
11/30 • Final Day • Hiraeth
Just another flat façade halfway down
the block, frowning, just a nod
at history barely trod
by the passage of time. A rising well,
keen farewells that swallow chimes
of welcome—time’s bitter crime.
Within these walls sits an old monolith
longing with his bones for cold
concrete to wake paved with gold
and he will slip into the well someday
conveyed from farewell straight to
hello, evergreen and true.
Hiraeth is a Welsh word for “a deep longing for something, especially one’s home.” Fittingly for today, I’ve chosen englyn penfyr—a Welsh form. While many englyns are quatrains, this one is based around the tercet, with internal and end rhymes.
Learn about englyn penfyr here
NovPAD 2024 Table of Contents
03 • A Postcard From… , Landscape
04 • Third Place, Origin Story, Ekphrastic (Form Friday)
08 • Golden Shovel (Form Friday), Sacred Space
09 • Place at the Table, Nomad
12 • Native, Sonnet (Form Friday)
17 • Poet’s Pick (Form Friday), Hiraeth • *This post*
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These are rich poems. I'm particularly taken by:
"A rising well,
keen farewells that swallow chimes
of welcome—time’s bitter crime."