[David Rosenthal]

Originally Posted by Spindleshanks

Hi Pedro.

Heptameter seems to work for the 14 by 14 editors. Among the current selections is a fourteener, Giants. I would take that as formal endorsement of the metre, along with a bow.

Peter

See, I read that when when issue came out, and I knew it was long lines, but didn't intuitively know it was heptameter. Anyway, didn't trouble over it at all -- definitely clicks into the 4/3 thing Susan and Tim are talking about -- and it is a very fine poem. So there you go. (Nice work, Peter).

David R.

[John Whitworth]

I think if you roughen it up and vary it it works very well for certain sorts of poem. I wrote one about looking after my very young daughter more than a quarter of a century ago. I won't quote a lot but here's a stanza the first one, so that you get the idea. I've always known the thing as a fourteener, but a lot of the lines here have more than fourteen syllables.

The sportsfield's just a field again, the grass just grass, from the ledge
On the nettled stile, to the exhausted gate, from the ditch to the tousled hedge,
An unmarked, roughly mown, undifferentiated scene,
And in the middle, my tiny daughter, tinier in all that green