This is how you make the best Sinterklaas poem
In 6 simple steps
I know that some of you are already developing gray hairs at the thought of the poems you have to write. Just as I feel like I have two left hands with only three fingers, because crafting is not my hobby and therefore not my strong suit, playing with words is a horror for others.
To still score on package evening and to show the person for whom you are writing the poem that you care about him/her, it is nice to make an extra effort. I will help you.
1. Come up with a poem structure
We usually rhyme in Sinterklaas poems according to the ABAB (the last word of line 1 rhymes with line 3 and the last word of line 2 rhymes with that of line 4) or AABB scheme (the last word of the first line rhymes with the last word of the next line) and so on. You score your first points if you choose a sonnet (rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA CDC DCD), for example.
If a sonnet is just a bit too ambitious for you, consider the limerick: AABBA. Example:
A driver from Bombay
was a man who did everything so dumb
that all the traffic
when seeing that gentleman
would rather detour over Eindhoven
2. You can erase a letter
For the sake of a nice rhyme, you can be a bit less strict grammatically. As in the above limerick, the ‘d’ in ‘omreed’ and ‘dom deed’ was removed because otherwise it wouldn't rhyme with ‘Bombay’. That is of course completely permissible.
3. Choose a theme
The singer of the Tröckener Kecks once said: ‘Creativity thrives best in a slightly too tight bag.’ So as soon as you limit yourself a bit by choosing a fixed rhyme form and a theme, you will see that finding a nice rhyme actually becomes much easier.
4. Penalties for clichés
Not ‘Sinterklaas was thinking’. Unless you make a theme out of that and start every line with ‘Sinterklaas was thinking’ and then serve something brilliant.
5. Start early
Then it simmers nicely in your head and gets better and better.
6. Another tip
Presentation matters too. Print your poem on nice paper, choose an old-fashioned font, and also fun: burn the edges of your paper so it really looks like an old document.
