Metre and rhythm, explained practically
You do not have to be a poet to feel rhythm. You feel it every time you tap along to a song or hear a sentence that flows nicely. Metre is the name for what happens there: the steady wave of stressed and unstressed syllables. For a Sinterklaas poem you only need three skills. Counting syllables, hearing stresses and reading aloud. The examples below are Dutch, since that is what most of these poems are written in, with an English gloss.
Counting syllables
A syllable is a block of sound that you say in one go. "Fiets" (bike) is one syllable, "fietsen" two, "fietsenmaker" (bike mechanic) four. Count by carefully tapping along while you say the word slowly. A tip: every syllable has a vowel in it, so you can also count the vowels you pronounce. Watch out for the silent e, as in "Lotte". It counts as a syllable, even though it is soft.
Try it with this line: "Lot-te fietst al-tijd veel te snel" (Lotte always cycles much too fast). That is eight syllables. The next line, "en ver-geet vaak haar ei-gen bel" (and often forgets her own bell), also has eight. That is why they sound so smooth side by side.
Feeling the stress
Every Dutch word with more than one syllable has a heaviest syllable. In "fietsen" that is FIET, in "vergeten" it is GE, in "cadeau" it is DO. If you put the stresses under each other, you can see the rhythm of your line:
LOT-te FIETST AL-tijd veel te SNEL en ver-GEET VAAK haar EI-gen BEL
Roughly: Lotte always cycles much too fast, and often forgets her own bell.
Both lines have four stresses, and the last stress falls on the rhyme word. That is why these two lines feel like a good pair. If one line has four stresses and the next has six, it sounds like a pavement that suddenly ends.
This stress is also the basis for rhyme. Two words rhyme if their last stressed vowel and everything after it sound the same. Always check that aloud. In the rhyme dictionary the words are grouped by sound instead of by spelling.
Why lines of equal length read better
A listener makes an unconscious prediction. After the first line they expect the second to be about as long and the rhyme to land in the same place. If that expectation is met, they relax and can enjoy the content. If it is not, their attention goes to the jerky rhythm instead of to your joke.
You do not have to be strict. Nobody notices a difference of one or two syllables, as long as the number of stresses stays the same. A line of seven and a line of nine syllables with four stresses each reads fine. A line of eight and one of twelve does not.
An example of rhythm that stumbles
Sofie loopt met Bas elke dag, en hij blaft naar alles wat hij ziet in het park, vooral naar de eenden, met een lach.
Roughly: Sofie walks with Bas every day, and he barks at everything he sees in the park, especially at the ducks, with a laugh.
The second line is almost twice as long. You have to speed up to finish it, and the rhyme word "lach" trails after it like a loose note. A better version:
Sofie loopt met Bas elke dag, de eenden gaan, hij blaft met een lach.
Roughly: Sofie walks with Bas every day, the ducks flee, he barks with a laugh.
Both lines now have about the same weight. The joke has not got smaller, it just arrives faster.
Reading aloud as a test
This is the most important test, and you cannot skip it. A poem always sounds better in your head than in your mouth. Do the following:
- Read the poem aloud, at normal speed, as if you were performing it.
- Mark every place where you almost stumble, skip a word or run out of breath.
- Rewrite those places. Often it helps to cut one word or replace it with a shorter one.
- Read it again, and preferably ask someone else to do it too. A different voice stumbles in different places.
While you read, tap the stresses on the table with your finger. If your finger lands in about the same place on every line, you are in good shape. If your finger searches, the listener searches too.
A few rules of thumb
- Keep one line within six to ten syllables. That fits in one breath.
- Let the last stress of the line fall on the rhyme word.
- Use short words at the end. Long words slow down the punchline.
- If you want to slow down for a moment, use one longer line at a deliberate point, for instance in the closing verse.
- Do not aim for perfection. What matters is that it sounds like a person telling a story.
You will find more about typical slips in regularity in common mistakes. Try out the rhythm straight away in the writing studio.