DIRT 34 - UNDERSTANDING IAMBIC PENTAMETER

Iambic pentameter is a line of poetry written in alternating stressed and unstressed syllables, with a total of ten
syllables to the line.

The first thing you need to understand is an iambic "foot", which is two syllables, one unstressed and the other
stressed. Take the word "inform". The first syllable is unstressed and the second one is stressed, so "inFORM" is one
iambic foot. There are five iambic feet in a line of iambic pentameter.

Now try writing a line in iambic pentameter yourself. Remember, you will need five iambic feet, so that the total
syllable count in your line will be ten. Here is one that you might come up with:

The dog needs to go outside to be walked.

This is ten syllables all right, but it's not iambic pentameter, because if you put the naturally stressed syllables in bold
print, it would look like this:

The DOG NEEDS to go outSIDE to be WALKED.

It is not every other syllable that is stressed! To turn your thought into a line of iambic pentameter, you could change it
to this:

I NEED to TAKE the DOG outSIDE to WALK.

This is a correct iambic pentameter line, because you can hear that every other syllable is stressed. Not as hard as
you thought? That is because the English language is often normally spoken in a rhythm very similar to iambic
pentameter.

Now try writing a poem in iambic pentameter yourself…

Now look at the information on the next page; summarise the effects of prose and iambic pentameter in 6 bullet points
and see if you can include this in your analysis: