Tetractys Trail
a call for collaborators
What’s a tetractys?
The tetractys is a poetic form developed by the English poet Ray Stebbing, which, as he says, “could be Britain’s answer to the haiku.” Simple and concrete, just like haiku, it must convey in its conciseness one particular idea or a moment at one time. The poetic form originates from a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row, which is the geometrical representation of the fourth triangular number, known as the tetractys or tetrad, or the tetractys of the decad. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the secret worship of Pythagoreanism: there were four seasons, and the number was also associated with planetary motions and music.
The Form
The poetic form, however & thus, consists of at least five lines of total 20 syllables, with the formula of 1/2 /3/4/10 syllables in the consecutive lines. An example of a single tetractys stanza, courtesy of our kind editor, Tamyka Bell:
The collaboration
In this project we’ll be forming chains of tetractys. The chain will consist of a set of tetractys with the following tetractys being reversed, i.e. if the first one is in the order of 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, syllables, the stanza following it will be 10, 4, 3, 2, 1, syllables, the third stanza will once again be 1, 2, 3, 4, 10 syllables, and so on.
How this will work?
If you wish to participate in this project, just fill in this simple Google form. More details below.
• Two sample trails
We’re kicking off two separate trails along with this post, with Indira Reddy and Tamyka Bell as the respective tetractys masters. As masters, they have written their opening stanza and are looking for more writers. Also, as masters they’re in charge of regulating the trail, letting the next writer know of his/her turn, to make sure the stanzas are added as soon as they are published elsewhere (read for clear instructions, below), and such. We’re keeping these two trails limited to 4 tetractys stanzas, but other trails need not have the same number of stanzas. The master’s job is crucial in that they will write the first stanza, maintain the trail. The editors reserve the faculty of choosing the master. Here are the two trails with Indira & Tamyka as masters —
&
•More trails
We’ll be forming more trails depending on participants’ interest. The same can be filled up in the form above, and we’ll sort the writers in groups accordingly.
How it works: further steps for the trails —
- The master will write his/her first stanza & submit it to Chalkboard, along with the sequence of the writers.
- The master will then notify the next writer of their turn to write their part of the tetractys.
- She/he will write the respective stanza as a new (draft) story on Medium.
- At the end of your draft add, “This poem is the nth stanza of <poem name>, one of Chalkboard’s Tetractys Trails.”
- Publish your tetractys in any pub (other than Chalkboard) or directly as you’d normally do. (You can put your piece behind the paywall if you wish to, but make sure the master has access to it.)
- Then the writer will let her/his tetractys master know that the stanza is ready by tagging them in the response (or by any other means you prefer).
- The tetractys master will add your stanza to the main story along with a link to your published piece (marked with a lock emoji if your story is paywalled).
- The tetractys master notifies the next player of their turn.
The final poem & the ownership
The work-in-progress & the final poem will be published in Chalkboard and will have copyright shared by all the contributors. That is if you wish to publish the full Tetractys chain elsewhere, permission must be granted by all the contributors.
If you have any questions, please leave a response and we will get back to you asap.
