ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

Thanks to all those who had a go at the last homework prompts. Seems it had a degree of difficulty - but if it was too easy it wouldn't be a challenge would it? I reckon challenges are good if they make us extend ourselves just that little bit more. It is how we learn and we are never to old to learn and we should never stop learning. Have to keep those brain cells active especially as we are all getting older.

So lets see who is up for the challenge of writing a Rondeau. Any budding songwriters out there - this could be an opportunity.


A Rondeau is a French form, 15 lines long, consisting of three stanzas: a quintet 5 lines, a quatrain 4 lines, and a sestet 6 lines with a rhyme scheme as follows: aabba aabR aabbaR. Lines 9 and 15 are short - a refrain (R) consisting of a phrase taken from line one. The other lines are longer (but all of the same metrical length).

Here is a Rondeau that I am sure you all know or at least perhaps have read but maybe never knew it was a Rondeau.

In Flanders Fields
John McCrae (1872-1918)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark the place, and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below

We are the dead; short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take upon your quarrel with the foe!
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high!
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

So there you have it - now lets see what we can manage to magic up - off you go my po'ing friends, sharpen those pencils and get the brain cells going and weave your magic.

Cheers

Maureen