The Form Runners And Inventors' Challenge
Book 3 of The Challenge Collection Trilogy
First Published on 8th March 2024
Revised Edition 2024
Ever felt like your voices had frozen within your heart like ships at a port longing for its freedom? Writing poetry by inventing forms or following classic ones are one of the best ways that help with writer’s block.
The Form Runners And Inventors Challenge is Ink Gladiators Press’ first workbook. It was conducted by Our Earthians Community Group on Instagram and is the third book in The Challenge Collection. Our authors invented new poetic forms by giving them new paths so runners could find and run along with them. The forms in this book were selected based on originality, popularity and simplicity of rules for others to follow. The Form Inventors also handpicked their first Form Runners to get published in this anthology.
If you are someone working through a writer’s block but who also enjoys working on new poetry forms, then this is tailor made for you.
A u t h o r s
Alexia Leigh Alwyn McNamara Anmol Gupta Aru Deep Ashes T.L. Ashes Atlas W Keeting Becky Who Bob Pallister Brendan O’Brien Christina Triplett-Wagenknecht Cleo Fernhill Cynthia Padilla Denise Rusley Erin Morley Geo Georgia Petrou Georgia Wainwright Geraldine Tan Gwen Saint-Mary Harshad Isa Joy Charlé Jessica Ridpath JoEllen Latika Ojha Linda Lokhee Lorenza Palomino Madhuprana Goswami Miriam Otto Nadia Niels Schoenmaker Reena Doss Ronald Speller Rohit Singh Bedi Rupali Gore Lale Sam Abyss Sierra Sharon L Andrews Sharron Green Shruti Sharma Steve Hetem Vanessa Thompson Bain William L. Steen Yusra
B o o k R e v i e w s
An example of modern creativity. An authentic, aesthetically meaningful source of inspiration and knowledge. According to poetry experts, there are two opposite ways of modern poetry presentation. Adherents of "real" poetry spend years nurturing their words, searching for the hard-hitting metaphors and comparisons, finding traditional publishers to end up with real, tangible books on the bookshelves in the actual bookstores. Social media created "Instapoetry": easily digestible, short material, usually placed on a nice background, to gain instant attention and attract followers. Created by social media, Instapoetry is commonly judged without diving into details and is denied an educative function. However, it's diverse and complex. The existence of each type of poetry, conventional or Instapoetry, rather enriches each other than contradicts. 'The 2021 Runners & Inventors Collection: An Annual Event' (book 1 in the series) by the publishing house Ink Gladiators Press, India, refutes the common knowledge about modern poetry's shallowness. Though the challenge's platform is Instagram, the publishing house seeks to widen the creativity's boundaries by creating new and exploring old poetic forms. The participants were encouraged to work with syllables' count, rhymes, lines and use words as visual art. The book's structure follows an alphabetic order, with the established poetry forms like haiku or sevenling put at the end for comparison. The pieces vary in themes, difficulty, and length, yet not a single poem represents a light read. These are some of the forms: Fibonacci Form (a Fibonacci sequence of numbers is the base for words' count); Dactyl Double Doubler Form (consists mainly from dactylic six-syllable words); XY form (uses words to create shapes of X or Y or λ); I'd recommend the book to poetry lovers who want to explore and practice new as well as conventional poetry forms.
-Darya Silman
Ingenious challenge. A wonderful anthology of invented forms which poets have followed and had fun with.
-Sharron Green
A fascinating and enjoyable read. A fascinating, enjoyable and essential read for anybody interested in poetry or creative writing.
-Randomer Bob