Introduction
Introduction Peter King started this than-bauk thread which burst upon an unsuspecting Hall Writers’ Forum - with surprising results/ The than-bauk is a Burmese form - a three-line poem, each line with four syllables, rhymed regularly: ---a --a-a-The fourth, third and second syllables respectively all rhyme (half and sight rhymes are allowed); for example, Darrell Barnes composed: Flexible form where words worm a new norm for us. The reader who is not familiar with the word may believe that Than-bauk is a holiday destination only recently discovered by adventurous poets, a delightful place in which to develop intricate rhyme schemes. The language is easy to master (words longer than two syllables are rare) but failure to observe correct syntax risks making one’s conversation unintelligible. Many of the contributions which follow are listed under the name of each author, each having a section of his or her own, but not necessarily in the order in which they were first posted. One of the delights of the Hall Writers’ Forum is how a post may spark all manner of contributions and responses: many of these were prompted by Tony Brignull’s Riddle and Lucy Newlyn’s Weed Patch. Indeed, the latter took on a life of its own (and has a garden in this booklet all to itself), populating barren ground with all kinds of plants donated by other writers - a sort of poetic guerilla gardening.
