Awit

The Awit is a Filipino poetry form explained below by Judi Van Gorder

On her wonderful PMO resource site:

• Awit literally means song. This stanzaic form seems very similar to the Tanaga. It is unique in that a stanza should be one complete, grammatically correct, sentence.
  
  The Awit is:
• stanzaic, written in any number of quatrains.
• a narrative, it tells a story.
• dodecasyllabic, 12 syllables per line, there is usually a pause after the 6th syllable.
• rhymed, each stanza mono-rhymed aaaa bbbb cccc etc.
• composed with each stanza representing a complete, grammatically correct, sentence.
• composed liberally using various figures of speech.
• written anonymously.

Pasted from <http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=2191>

My example of a single stanza poem

The Climb     (Awit)

I started up the hills, intending on that day

to climb like deer to plateaus where the rocks gave way

to grasses lush and green, above where wild hawks play,

and ended up on top- above all human fray.

© Lawrencealot - March 3, 2014