Invented by 19th-century poet John Skelton, Skeltonic verse is a verse form that uses short lines and extensive monorhyme to create a unique rambling effect that makes the poem feel like it’s tumbling down the page. This led to another modern nickname for the form: “Tumbling verse.”
The roundel introduced by Algernon Charles Swinburne is an English variation of the French rondeau, joining a lengthy list of the form’s descendants. In practice, it’s essentially a shortened version of the rondeau, retaining the traditional refrains and two-sound rhyme scheme.
The English roundelay is a stanzaic verse form that uses rhymed sixains and extensively employs refrain, almost to the exclusion of any unrepeated lines. Roundelay can otherwise refer to a short simple song that employs refrains and neither should be confused with the unrelated American “rondelay” poem form.
The roundabout is a twenty-line poem comprised of four quintains. The meter of the poem is iambic, though its length changes from line to line. The poem also features refrains unique to each verse, but its most interesting quality is the way the rhyme scheme comes ‘back around’ to the first end sound.
The magic 9 poem is a simple nine-line poem with a rhyme scheme of ABACADABA. It has no other rules or regulations. The rhyme scheme is deceptively easy to remember since it is literally just the word “Abracadabra” with the r’s removed
Clerihews are a quatrain poem form invented by English poet Edmund Clerihew Bentley in 1905 in the collection Biography for Beginners. They utilize a simple AABB rhyme scheme to present famous or historical figures in mundane, anachronistic, or absurd situations.
The bob and wheel is a technique comprised of a wheel, four lines with a ballad-style rhyme scheme, and a bob, the short line that marks a transition between the preceding lines of the poem and the wheel. This is commonly accompanied by a drastic shift in meter. This technique was most common in Middle English.
Abstract poetry or sound poetry relies entirely on the aural quality of the poems produced, often to the complete or partial exclusion of meaning and/or narrative. Abstract poems were first popularized as an idea by Edith Sitwell, though the concept of sound has always been entwined with poetry to some extent.
The curtal sonnet is an eleven-line variation of the Petrarchan sonnet, designed by Gerard Manley Hopkins to act as a sonnet at three-fourths the original length. It utilizes a unique meter called sprung rhythm, which was also invented by Hopkins. It’s usually seen as a derivation rather than a unique form.
A dramatic monologue is a poem that is in the form of a speech. It tends to be “dramatic” because of its theatrical feature. Dramatic monologues are used by poets to express a point of view through the words of a solitary character.
Blank verse is a poem type that’s usually written with precise meter—usually iambic pentameter—but with unrhymed lines. Playwrights and dramatists from the 1550s developed the use of blank verse in English. That eventually started the wide use of the blank verse poem type in both epic and dramatic poetry.
A limerick is a humorous (and often rather irreverent) short five-line poem that utilizes a simple rhyme scheme to punctuate the comedic nature of the poem. They were popularized by Edward Lear, though he did not specifically call his poems limericks.