| What is a tetractys?
Searching one day in the Oxford English Dictionary, I came across an
unfamiliar word - 'tetractys'. It seems that Euclid, the mathematician
of classical times, considered the number series 1,2,3,4 to have mystical
significance because its sum is 10, so he dignified it with a name of its
own - Tetractys. This gave me an idea for a new form of syllabic verse
consisting of five lines, the first of which contains a single syllable,
the second two, the third three, the fourth four and the last ten syllables.
What better name could I give it than 'Tetractys'?
Fat Man Walking
Bulk
teeters
gracefully
on tiny feet -
as any ballerina, light and neat
Turn the tetractys on its head and you get the reverse tectractys:
As windblown, random, as subject to chance,
our short days drift
- on thin threads
helpless
dance
N.B. Although these particular examples rhyme and alliterate, tetractyses
do not have to do so.
The tetractys could be Britain's answer to the haiku. Its challenge
is to express a complete thought, profound or comic, witty or wise, within
the narrow compass of twenty syllables.
Or forty.
Top one tetractys with another, and we get...
Lifelines
Life
depends
on a strand
as frail as fine
as a migrating spider's silken line.
As windblown, random, as subject to chance,
our short days drift -
on thin threads
helpless
dance.
... a double tetractys!
I figure that there are four possible shapes for a double tetractys,
but I leave you to work it out for yourself.
Some more examples
On Scafell Pike
Stone
upon
huge stone piled -
a devil's cairn
Antlike I clamber towards a grey sky.
Lit windows
Lit
windows
seen across
moonless night cheer,
lighten the lone traveller's step, ease his fear.
Snowfield
Look!
Behind
your footprints
fading fast, show
where you have been. Before you virgin snow
White crystals, wind-driven, fly - conceal your past
So, tread blithely!
Thus shriven
surely
blest!
In a summer garden
Leaves
lift green
over grass,
granting cool shade
in which to read when, rarely, the sun shines.
Cacophony shatters calm; birdsong is drowned,
thoughts are scattered
murderous
notions
burn.
Wasp
Smart,
busy,
a striped clown
narrow-waisted
as a Chicago gangster, threatens me.
A tetractys competition
The Prizes:
1st prize £250, 2nd prize
£125, 3rd prize £75
Prize winning poems and the best of the runners
up to be published in AsWELLas magazine
About the judges:
David Woolley is Literature Development Officer at Swansea’s
Dylan Thomas Centre. He is a published poet, with two volumes Cold
(Headland) and Falling from a Wall (Headlock) to his credit. He
is also a publisher of poetry. His magazine, Westwords, is soon to be re-launched.
Ray Stebbing, retired Further Education lecturer and inventor
of the tetractys, has one volume of verse published, Travelling Man
(Approach Poets). Poems 98, a pamphlet, was published early in 1999.
Another collection, Diapason, is also to be published by Westwords
Publications in 1999.
John Steer is a frequently-published poet and performer and is
Editor of AsWELLas Magazine and Chairman of West Essex Literary Society.
1 Entries should be sent to the address below, and must have been posted
before 1 August 1999.
2 Poems must satisfy the definition of the tetractys given overleaf.
A double tetractys counts as a single poem.
3 Each tetractys, or double tetractys, should have a title and should
be submitted on a separate sheet of A4 paper, typed or written in a clear
hand. There should be nothing else on these sheets.
4 Submissions should be accompanied by a separate A4 sheet with the
author’s name and address and a list of titles.
5 Submissions must be accompanied by the correct fee. Cheques or postal
orders should be made payable to West Essex Literary Society.
6 Entry fees are as follows: £5.00 for up to three poems, £10.00
for up to ten poems, 75p for each poem in excess of ten.
7 The judges’ decision will be final, and no correspondence about the
results will be entered into.
8 Entries cannot be changed once received, nor can they be returned,
so please keep copies!
9 To get notification of results, please enclose a stamped and self-addressed
envelope marked “Results” (Entrants from outside the UK should send International
Reply Coupons) Winners will be announced on this website in November 1999,
and in the next AsWELLas Magazine after that date.
10 If you wish to have confirmation that your entries have been received,
please enclose a postcard or stamped self-addressed envelope marked “Receipt”.
(Entrants from outside the UK should send International Reply Coupons)
11 Entry of a poem implies that the author is willing for it to be published
in AsWELLas Magazine and on this website.
12 Copyright of the poems remains with their authors.
Send entries to:
Tetractys Competition Secretary,
213 Shakespeare Crescent,
London
E12 6NA
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