Featured Friday: The Editors Write Untitled Villanelles

Welcome to our second ever Featured Friday! Every three weeks or so we’ll be publishing featured work, whether our own or the work of our lovely readers (submit your poems, hint hint cough cough), and when we feature our own poems, we don't just feature whatever we want. We tackle one of our own poetry prompts and show you the result!

Today, we decided to try our hand at the villanelle, and let us tell you, it wasn't exactly easy. Take a look at what our process looks like:

An impossible number of drafts later, and I think my poem is done. Check out the blog tomorrow afternoon for #featuredfriday! #poetry #creativeprocess #finally

A photo posted by Floodmark (@floodmark.poetry) on Feb 5, 2015 at 5:41pm PST

A look inside our creative process. #writing #poetry #moleskin

A photo posted by Floodmark (@floodmark.poetry) on Feb 6, 2015 at 11:12am PST

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So yeah. As you can see, we had a bit of a rough writing week. We rode the struggle bus. But eventually, we stepped off the bus, and here were our results:

Are these our favorite villanelles we've ever written? Certainly not. But because trying writing prompts is more about pushing your boundaries than creating a masterpiece, we're not too upset. What astounds us about these villanelles is that we seem to have momentarily switched styles. While Emily is normally the editor that is truest to form, it was Alli that stuck to the rules this time around. And, hilariously, neither of us could decide on a title, so we skipped it. We just plain skipped it.

See? Playing with form can mess with you in some truly interesting ways.

Now that we did it...it's your turn!

Have you written a villanelle? Did you try your hand at our villanelle prompt? What do you like or dislike about the villanelles we wrote? These are our burning questions. Drop a comment below or shoot us an email to let us know your thoughts!