Soc.history.what-if Renga sequence
About 7 months ago now a doe-snot post started what has become a *massive* thread on Soc.history.what-if. The thread now numbers in excess of 800 posts, and is still going strong after all this time. The basic rules are simple, a renga is a poem (similar to a Haiku) with 5 lines, made up of two divisions, 5-7-5 and 7-7 syllables each. The creators use the last division from the poem before, and add a new division of their own to it. This new division is then used by the next poet etc. As an example we have the first poems of the series -
The Emperor's tanks,
Light and swift in the paddies,
Rattle past Stonehenge.
The Emperor's tanks,
Light and swift in the paddies,
Rattle past Stonehenge.
May the great Ceaser's armies
never know Picti defeat.
May the great Ceaser's armies
never know Picti defeat,
As the long wall of
Hadrian's stubbon defence
lines the great Tiber.
If any of this interests you, feel free to drop by soc.history.what-if and join in. Eventually I also intend to get around to forming timelines for some alternate universes of the odder stanzas, it's an ongoing process, and there will always be new stuff arriving as I manage to set it up, and as we continue writing new stanzas. Many thanks to Bill Livingston and Stephen Copinger, the two other main offenders here, many of the poems are theirs (or partially so), and this couldn't have been done without them. Anyway, without further ado ....