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David Ellis Dickerson's avatar

Brilliant as ever! And it made me think about another restrictive verse form that, as far as I know, you've never attempted: The Scrabblegram. Not sure what else to call it, but in Scrabble competitions, it's very important to check and make sure all the tiles are there, and there are a few poems people have written to help, using every letter in the game (and, of course, both blanks). A guy named David Cohen has been writing them for years, and his first one won a Games Magazine Scrabblegram contest in 1997:

A clown jumps above a trapeze,

Arcs over one-eighty degrees,

Out into mid-air,

Quite unaware

Of his exiting billfold and keys.

(The blanks here are E and S.)

Because all Scrabblegrams are, by definition, exactly 100 letters/tiles long, they're pretty easy to share on social media, and I think that was David Cohen's entire output for a while. Anyway, I'd love to see what you do.

Anthony Etherin's avatar

I’ve only ever written one (blanks in square brackets)

SCRABBLE

A game

of S[c]rabble

is a jolly

experience.

I act in duty,

organize

square

tokens

on top

of a grid.

I hunt

valued

word[s].

I view them.

It’s a constraint I sometimes recommend to people just starting out with anagrams — with 100 letters to play with, it’s pretty easy to write whatever you want with them, especially given those useful blanks!

Ruv Draba's avatar

I feel strongly judged by your Pangrams.

glum_hippo's avatar

Today I learned that you built a crwth! Do you include it in your recordings?

Anthony Etherin's avatar

It's handmade, but not handmade by me!

I used it on my Bluer EP, which consists only of crwth and bouzouki. I'm also currently using it on something new.