A Challenge and a Review: Dead of Winter
Posted: December 24, 2021 Filed under: Book Review, Creativity, Epic Fantasy, Fantasy, Poetry, Reader Challenge | Tags: Book Review, Dead of Winter, Fantasy, Poetry, Reader Challenge, Teagan Riordain Geneviene, Writing to be Read 9 Comments
The Challenge
This post is a response to a challenge issued on Teagan Riordain Geneviene’s blog, where she challenges readers to create a piece of art in the medium of your choice, inspired by her book, Dead of Winter: Journey 1: Forlorn Peak.
Recently, I’ve been dabbling in Japanese and English syllabic poetry, and I knew that I wanted to create a poem for this challenge. The image and poetry above is my response to Teagan’s challenge. It is a Shadorma poem, an form of syllabic poetry which may have originated in Spain, comprised of a sestet, or six-line poem with a syllabic count of 3-5-3-3-7-5 (Word Craft: Prose & Poetry, by Sally Cronin). Although no where have I found that Shadorma can appear with images to add meaning, like the Japanese Haiga poetry, I’ve found nothing that says it can’t, so I have featured mine with the image above.
They both create a feeling like what I felt after reading Dead of Winter, so might actually serve as a different type of book review. I think the poem could easily stand alone, so maybe that’s okay.
Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08RBBVRGX?tag=relinks-20
My Review
Dead of Winter: Journey 1: Forlorn Peak, by Teagan Riordain Geneviene is a brief little tale that sets the stage in a world where strict control prevents the protagonist, Emlyn, from revealing her gift of seeing and communicating with the dead. In this short tale, Emlyn receives a warning of what’s to come in the rest of the series. “Winter is coming…”
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Your poem and image evoke what I think of as “hard winter” very effectively.
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So glad you liked it, Liz. Perhaps that means the poem is effective, since that was the intent. Thanks for your comment. 🙂
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You’re welcome, Kaye Lynn. Yes, that means the poem is effective!
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Kaye, your poem is splendid! Thanks so much for rising to this creativity challenge. Beautifully done. I hope you enjoyed the beginning of Dead of Winter. Have a beautiful holiday season. Hugs!
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Hi Teagan, I did enjoy Dead of Winter, but it felt like a tease, making me want to read more. 🙂 I also enjoyed accepting your challenge. It was nice to have an excuse to write some new poetry. It was fun and I’m so glad you approve of the result.
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Loved your Shadorma sestet. I like Haiku, so will definitely give this form a try.
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So glad that you enjoyed it, Nancy. I don’t know if Shadorma is supposed to be paired with images, but it seemed like it fit perfectly, so I couldn’t resist. I do hope you try your hand at this poetry form. I enjoyed exploring possibilities and was happy for Teagan’s challenge for the chance to show off my new found skills.
My review of the book where I discovered this poem, “Word Craft: Prose & Poetry”, by Colleen Chesebro will be coming up before the end of the year, so watch for it. It provides easy to understand explanations of various poetry forms and a plethora of wonderful examples. I’ve really enjoyed exploring the forms of poetry that were new to me which it introduced.
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Book sounds great. I’ll look for the review. I’ve been considering a multi-genre book, so poetry help would be great.
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[…] Shadorma poem, which I published here, on Writing to be Read. You can see my example of a Shadorma here, but I don’t know if it is any good. It really was harder than I thought it would […]
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