Also known as Onegin Stanza, this form was created by the writer Alexandr Pushkin.
This is vaguely influenced by my favourite line in Margaret Atwood’s novel Cat’s Eye:
Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life sized.
I know the grownups cannot see it
They look at us and think it’s sweet,
The way we play, my friends and me, it
Looks so friendly, prim and neat.
But Poppy is a cruel dictator
She terrifies us and we hate her.
She makes the rules of every game
Each time we play it is the same:
It seems like fun to an outsider
Really, what it’s all about
Is ways to single someone out.
If one girl fails, we all deride her
With no-one daring to refuse
We all have far too much to lose.
Tom Juniper Poetry 