Tigerjade Verse Form

It’s always a bit disappointing when I find a new form but find very little information about it except for the basics. A search for the creator, Jacqueline Sturge, mostly just brought up links to examples of her poem, although one link was for a poetry book she’s included in: Poetry Styles, Book 8, by Alliance Poets.

So I don’t know why this form is called a Tigerjade, but I thought it was kind of a cool name. It’s written in as many octaves (eight-line stanzas) as you wish, and has a strict syllable count (3-3-12-12-12-12-3-3) and it rhymes in couplets.

Schematic:

xxa
xxa
xxxxxxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxxxxxb
xxxxxxxxxxxc
xxxxxxxxxxxc
xxd
xxd

xxe
xxe
xxxxxxxxxxxf
xxxxxxxxxxxf
xxxxxxxxxxxg
xxxxxxxxxxxg
xxh
xxh

. . . and so on for however many verses you wish to make.

And that’s all the information I could find about it. A search of the name itself came up with the Tiger Jade Capital investment company, and the crassula picturata, a rather cool looking succulent better known as tiger jade.

I would imagine you can write your Tigerjade on any subject you wish, and if you want to have a little fun with it, you could center it on the page. To be honest, I didn’t like the three syllable lines any more than I did the twelve syllable ones. Three was too few, twelve was too many. But I did like that it was written in couplets.


I see stars
maybe Mars
when I look up into the brilliant night sky
we seem to be alone here and I wonder why
the universe is so large and we are so small
is there no one out there who will answer our call?
So alone
on our own

We send probes
to other globes
in hopes of finding otherworldly life somewhere
some other species with new ideas to share
and if they are willing to travel all this way
we hope they will listen to what we have to say
peace for all
man’s sangraal.