[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]Ah, summer. The dog days thereof, in fact. The science fictioneer in me gets excited for the conjunction of the sun and Sirius, the Dog Star… but the rest of me is too damn hot and sweaty to care all that much.
When it’s this hot (I’m jealous of all you writers in the Southern Hemisphere right now, does anyone want to do a house trade? I’ll take your winter, you take my summer, swap in 6 months?) all I can think about is low-effort, fun writing. It’s hard to summon up a poem that reaches into the depths of my soul when those depths are full of used deodorant and a half-melted ice pack that I tucked down there in the vain hope of coolness. Coolth? If warmth is a word, why isn’t coolth?
My brain? has melted. Fortunately, there’s a great poetry from for these dog days of summer: doggerel.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
What is doggerel?
I’m sure you’ve heard doggerel used as a derogatory term. “That’s just doggerel” is something we often say to dismiss poems that are trite or poorly structured. But there’s such a thing as good, thoughtful doggerel, and after all the time you’ve put in learning to write in perfect rhyme and meter, writing doggerel can be a fun chance to play with breaking the rules of poetry on purpose.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
does it rhyme?
The answer is… mostly. It mostly rhymes. Doggerel generally has a very simple rhyme scheme like ABAB CDCD and so on. The rhymes don’t have to be perfect, but it’s a good chance to practice rhyming, and there’s a couple techniques to think about:
1) This is your chance to use the tritest, most hackneyed and overdone rhymes ever. Heart/apart, dream/seem and so on? Go for it.
2) This is also your chance to play with the notion of rhyming really dramatic words with very prosaic ones. What’s an awesome rhyme for hope? How about… grope?
3) Another fun thing to try is, in the middle of a poem with an absolutely predictable and perfect rhyme scheme, putting in a word that doesn’t really rhyme well at all. This “discord” emphasizes the word, and you can almost build a sub-poem within your poem out of those “missed notes.” Un-rhymed or unexpected words create a full stop within the rhythm of your poem, and doggerel gives you the chance to play with that technique fearlessly.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
does it scan?
Again… kinda. Mostly. Probably. It doesn’t have to scan perfectly, but be aware of the places it doesn’t, and try to play with the idea that these are places the reader will have to stop and re-read, so make them important. There’s no official scansion for doggerel, but iambic tetrameter shows up frequently because it makes for relatively brief lines. Think about:
1) Try to play with your scansion. Do three perfect lines and a fourth line that’s ridiculously long.
2) Don’t just put in any old words- at least know whether each line scans or not, and try to be deliberate with the places it doesn’t.
3) Or try to get the exact same number of syllables in each line with perfect rhyme but make sure no two lines have the same scansion.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]
That’s all she wrote
Go to it! Have at! There’s no upper or lower line limit for a doggerel poem, although keep in mind that they can be very tiring to read so if you want your reader to get through the whole thing without skimming, be gentle. Take breaks where your rhyme and scansion are perfect, and then push the whole thing down the stairs again.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
