The cento form has waxed and waned in popularity across the centuries, but in the modern era it finds a home in feminist reclamation (Kiki Petrosino’s “Cento” in Fort Red Boarder), queer reinterpretation (Simone Muench’s Wolf Cento), and political commentary (Collier Nogues’ The Ground I Stand On Is Not My Ground).

The piece I’ve written today is a cento made from lines in Seamus Heaney’s New Selected Poems 1988–2013 (Faber & Faber, 2014).

School Picture Cento
after Seamus Heaney

At school I loved one picture’s heavy greenness –
Sifting lightness and small jittery promises:
Pressed against my face,
He’ll wait a while before he kills the light
Keeping us together when together,
The very ‘there-you-are-and-where-are-you?’
Talk about changed lives! Those were the days –
The visible sea at a distance from the shore
Season of the drowsy ocean.

***

The rules for the cento have shifted over time — no surprise for a form that has been around for nearly two thousand years. Here is an outline of the classical rules and contemporary practice:

Classical Rules

• Only use whole lines from other poems.

• Do not change the wording.

• Do not change the order of words within a line.

• You may change punctuation.

• You may change capitalisation.

• You must create a new meaning through arrangement.

Contemporary Practice

Modern poets are more flexible:

• Some use half‑lines or phrases.

• Some mix poets.

• Some use prose sources.

• Some use song lyrics (copyright permitting).

• Some create “self‑centos” from their own work.

But the core principle remains:

A cento is a poem made entirely of borrowed lines, arranged to create a new emotional or narrative arc.

I would love to see your centos - post them in the comments and I’ll reply to every single one.

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Sometimes we are the ones searching for what has been lost, sometimes we are the ones the storm that scattered what we now cannot find. Sometimes we are both.

In the Morning

Last night I dreamt of a bird in flight
after a storm, in desperate search
for the nest and clutch of chicks
dislodged by the raging winds.

When I woke up too early this morning,
the world outside sleeping calmly,
I realised I was the bird
and I was the storm
and I wept.

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What I have decided to do to make this one better is write what I want. I love myths and folk tales, I love the gothic and I love a good bit of philosophical discussion along with romance and a consideration of identity and belonging. So that’s what I am writing.

Today’s poem has come from that. It isn’t that story but it is the theme that the variations will be built on.

To The Empty Hall

The water drip, drips onto the floor below.
I have had more names than breath
and seen all and everything come and go
from light and life to dust to death.

Countless golden thrones I have collected here
and filled a thousand palaces with my pleasure.
I have brought nations low, held men in tears
and all the while gathered in these countless treasures.

There’s not one alive that can surpass my glory
nor for that matter could the dead seek a claim
upon the form, the myth, the story
that has built empires in my name.

From all this horded gold and willing fools
I have built my fortress vast and mighty
and yet I possess not the knowledge nor the tools
to love and live again so lightly.

I sit now amongst my stolen gold
telling this empty hall the tales of old
and I can see there the stalagmite grow
as the water drip, drips onto the floor below.

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I have been reflecting, this month especially, on names and words and the power they hold over us and on what is a name after the owner of the noun is gone. The only thing that matters, that truly has meaning is love, true and authentic and the only thing that remains once we are gone is love in memory.

Love’s Epitaph

There is an easy ecstasy,
a quiet and deadly peace,
in surrendering one’s own elasticity
to sit so wholly at the feast.

Call it good, call it sin,
call it what you need
but know the words you call it
are yours alone to read.

Is it any wonder
that no poet has the right
to write their own sweet epitaph
that lives on after light.

Only in true loving
can any hope to gain
some eternal immortality
in joy, in hope, in pain.

And I found that love I needed
in this sweet and warm embrace
so no longer do I plead for
all to see my face.

Now I am yours and you are mine,
where life in trials and love is blind.

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A golden shovel takes a number of words, usually a single line, from an original source text (often a poem, but it can be any text) and uses those words as the ending words of each line in a new poem.

At its heart, the Golden Shovel is about honouring the original writer - not just their words, but the mood, tone, or emotional core of the poem you’re responding to.

I would not be so arrogant to put words into the mouth of Hayes and I would highly recommend reading more about his motivations and influences. I always find Poetry Foundation a great place to start.

Below is my own attempt at a golden shovel to demonstrate how the form can be used.

Anything but Goodbye

A golden shovel poem after London Address by Max Wallis (2025)

“I couldn’t think of words except goodbye”

It was several days before I
began to see the truth I couldn’t
bear to know or think
the things I should of
said was all the words
that meant anything except
that last, unclear, goodbye.

***

I tried not only to use the words from the line, but also to carry the emotion of the line and the poem as a whole.

The work of Max Wallis - especially in the collection Well Done You Didn’t Die - often speaks to struggles with mental health, queerness, and identity. These are all things I’ve been negotiating for most of my life, so his writing resonates deeply with me.

I highly recommend giving this form a go. If you want to post your own Golden Shovels in the comments, I’ll do my best to respond and discuss your work. (That’s assuming this article doesn’t go viral - posts about poetic form are always exploding on social media, as we all know.)

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There’s often a fascination with poetry only ever telling the “truth” of a poet’s experiences. I’ve written plenty of poems rooted in my own life — my past, sexuality, traumas, and daily moments — but poetry is also creative writing. It has always been a storytelling medium. Verse recited to groups and passed down through generations was likely the first form of narrative we had.

I love working with myth and folk tales, and recently I’ve been enjoying the more gothic side of poetry too.

Today’s daily poem is a triolet, a 13th‑century French fixed form that was first made popular by a 17th‑century Benedictine monk, Patrick Carey. (Presumably for the four hundred years in between, people were just messing about with it or writing courtly love poems.) The form entered English‑language poetry through the 19th‑century poet Robert Bridges. (Triolet - Wikipedia)

Dreams of Him

Through the dark and sleepless night
restless dreams play past your eyes.
The visions there far clearer than sight
through the dark and sleepless night
your mind replays his final plight
and though you know this man told lies
through the dark and sleepless night
restless dreams play past your eyes.

The Rules of the Form are Simple:

1. A1 — your opening line (rhyme A)

2. B1 — your second line (rhyme B)

3. a — new line (rhyme A)

4. A1 — repeat line 1

5. a — new line (rhyme A)

6. b — new line (rhyme B)

7. A1 — repeat line 1

8. B1 — repeat line 2

That’s it. No syllable count, no metre requirements — just repetition and rhyme. (The 19th‑century English versions were often in iambic pentameter, but I’m unconvinced that was anything more than the fashion of the time.)

If you create your own following this pattern, I’d love to see them. Feel free to post them in the comments.

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This one came from the prompt: “Write a poem about pidgeons [sic].”
By hour twenty‑one of writing (and hour twenty‑six of being awake), I had never written a limerick before and was in a deeply silly mood.

Most of my poetry leans toward the serious — myths, legends, love, imprisonment.
But sometimes it’s good to write something purely for fun.

Final note: no pigeons were harmed in the making of this poem.

There Once was a Young Man from Dijon

There once was a young man from Dijon

Who took peculiar fancy to pigeon.

With his fine racing squab

He was sacked from his job,

And now eats squab not filet mignon.

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Just four more hours and I can sleep.

Beauty in Your Sight

Pulled from my darkened hole

You raised me up and showed me light

And surely saved me; body and soul.

Pulled from my darkened hole

Brought back alive, born fresh, made whole,

Found and seen as beauty in your sight.

Pulled from my darkened hole

You raised me up and showed me light.

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This poem is a very real reflection of my relationship with my partner. They gave me understanding, safety, and love at a time when I was falling apart, and they keep loving and supporting me throughout life. They are also gorgeous, sexy, and so completely my person. I know I am very lucky to have them in my life, and they are — in greater or lesser ways — in almost all my poems, even if it’s just in the way they make me feel safe enough to write them.

When We Came Up for Air

It wasn’t the first time we met
— that was consumed in nervous passion,
fumbled kisses and desire —
it was days later,
when we came up for air
and found the world brighter.

We walked together, hand in hand,
the sun hiding her gaudy shine behind clouds
— painting the day in shades of grey —
but I saw shine, daybreak, all my tomorrows
in your eyes, and I just knew.

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Fenestration

The monstera is outgrowing its pot.
Young eager leaves reach, whole, for the sky,
the light, the window.
All too eager to mature with holes,
Swiss-cheese wounds of their own,
a misguided impression of how to impress
a world more interested in product,
image, in presentation than preservation….

But, of course, the monstera is
outgrowing its pot, naturally, steady,
to its own time scale that doesn’t care for me.
Perhaps it’s not the plant
I’m really thinking of at all.

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The First Time I Heard Music

I remember the first time
seeing the outline of your
sublime form and realising this
wasn’t in the books at school.
Only ever one prince in a fairy-tale.

We were about ten, eleven maybe
and had been thick as thieves
since you landed on my
backwater planet and saved me,
introduced me to Queen and Alien Ant Farm.

I’d never heard music before
we used your dad’s CD player
(at full volume) and saw
the little silhouette of a man.
Only ten, perhaps, but

I knew I wanted
a good old-fashioned lover boy.
You were more interested in
smooth criminals with attitude
so, when we kissed, it was
‘just for practice’, ‘just to see’.

I remember seeing your sublime form
but did you ever see me at all.

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This isn’t a poem about the episode itself. It’s a poem about the moment after — when the world comes back into focus, when the light feels a little brighter again.

I hope it rings true for some of you.

After

Coming out the other side
the world, despite the June rain,
looks that much brighter.
The storm was just a shower – again.

And God, how I sleep and sleep
as if the endless sleep
I’d quietly hoped for
in the middle of the tempest
had finally claimed me.

But to wake, reach out,
find you still here, weathered
and worn perhaps, buffeted by my winds,
but here.
These are the days I am glad
I woke up.

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Maybe this poem might speak to anyone trying to keep their footing.

Sea Legs

Today the world feels unsteady.
I can feel the pitch and toss
of our collective voyage
through this cold and star-pricked night.

It seems the rest of you
all have your sea legs
whilst I cling tightly
to my life-jacket, just in case.

The boat rocks stern to bow,
a storm, in our wake, of no small consequence.
All I can do is hang on
and hope for calmer waters.

I see you, up ahead, checking lifeboats.
Perhaps with you, at last, I have learnt to float.

Better than the Weather

The small weight of past mistakes,
like raindrops in summer falling in
a parched reservoir just in time,
catch me unawares some days
and slow me to a crawl.

My thoughts run on ahead of me
over distant cranial ridges
until I can no longer see their shapes,
my voice – hoarse from calling them to heal.

Only the rich smell of hot coffee
and petrichor bring me back.
I cup the mug in my hands
and hope, somewhere,
you are better than the weather.

Preparing

By this time next week
I will have been up for hours.
It’s the poetry marathon —
a serious undertaking —
twenty four hours
of endurance writing.

So, I have been doing my exercises;
stretching my similes like dough,
taking a metaphor out for a jog,
staying up late.

I’m not looking to come in first
(don’t even think you can)
or even break any records.
I just want to move with a mass
of other poets through the streets
of a day and a night
and write, and write and write.

I Can’t Recall

I had a dream last night
so vivid I woke up exhausted.
I must have been running
or in the thick
of some great labour.
Perhaps it was another dream of you.
I can’t recall.
I will try and stay awake now
and get some rest.

Straight Relationship?

Someone I had never met told me
my relationship was ‘straight’.

And, you see,
that doesn’t really paint the whole picture.
And yes, if you only ever see queer through stricter
lenses of given-at-birth identities
then you will see a man and a woman in love.

But, sweetheart, when your push comes to my shove
nothing I do, or have ever done
is simply heterosexual.

So come
see me, the child, queer before I knew the word
pushing toy prams, playing house and then I heard
Queen and Blondie, found my hairbrush, my dance,
and boys and girls – the only boxes we had.

Oh, how I have loved and cried at every pride
and walked with my partner by my side.

And whilst I am sure you mean no hate
please don’t ever call me straight.

Lίps

The wind gusts up south westerly
whistling round the building
seeking out forgotten windows.
Lίps — sitting between your sisters —
the edge of summer rain
and spring breeze
but always your own storm.
Travel, change, dress well.

It Looks Like Rain

I woke up and must have only just missed you.
The remains of yesterday’s birthday
linger about our flat, now just washing up.
I must have only just missed you leaving
your pillow’s still warm and smells of your sleep.
Outside I see the grey clouds are massing.
It looks like rain.