thesilkroadtoday
By Santosh Kumar Pokharel
pokharel.santosh@gmail.com
How the Knot Was Tied
As an instant poet, I had long dreamed of introducing a poetry structure that could express a poet’s say clearly in a compact stanza with brevity. I wanted to bring something morphosemantically new into the craft. While creating a new poem, I found that a short stanza of three lines could carry a full message—and I was certain this three-liner should not imitate the haiku in any way.
I began with a syllabic pattern of 1-2-1, rhyming the last line with the first. The structure looked good. This style was first named #pokhreliknots. I then extended the poem to 1-2-3-2-1 in the same manner, and kept going until I reached a twenty-five-line stanza, nominating the longer forms Vingtet and Vint-e-Cinque. The rule everywhere remained unchanged—the first and last lines mirrored each other in rhyme. This was the first triangular structure to begin from a monosyllabic line and stretch to twenty, then twenty-five lines.
During composition, I discovered that repeating the central line produced a peculiar resonance across the whole stanza. I adopted this as the Morphosemantic Trapezium, with patterns such as 1-2-3-3-2-1, 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1, and 1-2-3-4-5-5-4-3-2-1.
The fundamental rule of mirroring first and last lines was now firmly in place. Then came an opportunity to present a workshop for the master’s degree students of Tribhuvan University. There I felt the need for stanzas flexible enough to carry a poet’s entire say while keeping the rhyming rule unaltered. I began forming shorter stanzas for poems and lyrics—starting from polysyllabic counts and ending each stanza on the same rhyme as its opener. It was at this stage, when the polysyllabic opener came into use, that the form became known as Pokhrelian Stanzas. These shorter stanzas looked even more aesthetic and meaningful, which led me to name the complete form Pokhrelian Stanzas: Morphosemantic Triangulum and Morphosemantic Trapezium. I was overwhelmed with joy when beautiful lyrics and poems with grave meanings could emerge from this structure. Today, poets across continents are practicing this style.
The Architecture of the Knot
What began as a three-line experiment grew into a complete architecture. The Pokhrelian Stanza rests on a single, unalterable principle: the first and last lines of every stanza mirror each other in rhyme. Upon this foundation, the form unfolds in two complementary movements.
The first is the Morphosemantic Triangulum—the triangular stanza that begins with a monosyllabic line, expands syllabically to an apex, and contracts back to a monosyllabic line rhyming with the opening one. From the briefest Trimetric Knot or Trentet (1-2-1) to the Pentametric Knot or Pentet (1-2-3-2-1), the Heptametric Knot or Heptet (1-2-3-4-3-2-1), and onward to the extended Vingtet and Vint-e-Cinque, each stanza forms a visual and rhythmic triangle whose central line marks the summit of the thought. The expansion and contraction of syllables is not decorative; it is morphosemantic—the shape of the stanza carries the shape of the meaning.
The second is the Morphosemantic Trapezium, born from the discovery that repeating the central line produces a peculiar resonance, an echo that deepens the stanza’s emotional and semantic field. Here the pattern becomes Quadret (1-2-2-3), Hexametric Knot or Hexet (1-2-3-3-2-1), Octet (1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1), and so on. The mirrored rhyme of first and last lines remains inviolate, but the doubled centre gives the poem a lingering, reflective quality—the knot tightened twice.
As the form travelled from the page to the workshop, a further need arose: stanzas flexible enough to carry a poet’s entire say while preserving the rhyming rule. Thus emerged the polysyllabic stanzas—shorter and more numerous, beginning not with a monosyllable but with a longer line, and closing each stanza on the same rhyme as its opener. Patterns such as 3-4-5-5-4-3 and 5-6-7-8-8-7-6-5 allowed lyrics and longer poems to breathe without surrendering the form’s discipline. These shorter stanzas proved, if anything, even more aesthetic and meaningful—compact yet complete, rhymed yet free.
Together, the Triangulum and the Trapezium, the monosyllabic and the polysyllabic, constitute the Pokhrelian Stanzas. Unlike haiku, which seeks brevity without rhyme, the Pokhreli Knot is confined and rhymed—a deliberate advance over modern blank verse and the loosely worded short poem. It offers the poet a structure at once strict and spacious, capable of wit, grief, love, and meditation within the same mirrored frame.
Starting from the three-liner and extending to twenty-five-line stanzas, the Pokhrelian Stanzas render an unparalleled contribution to the morphology of poetry building.
The Pokhrelian Sonnets and Beyond
At the furthest reach of the Trapezium so far lies the Pokhrelian Sonnet, a fourteen-line stanza following the pattern 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. This is the morphosemantic trapezium in its most extended form: the syllables climb from one to seven across seven lines, pause at the doubled seventh line—the apex where the resonance deepens—and then descend symmetrically to a monosyllabic close that rhymes with the opening word. The ascent gathers; the doubled centre holds; the descent releases. Meaning is carried as much by the architecture as by any single line.
Sonnet Knot (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-7-6-5-4-3-2-1)
Morphosemantic Trapezium
March 30, 2024. Nepal.
Naive
Love’s boon
From yonder
Shall happen soon
As liable, who should
Give them the silver spoon
My eyes are there for her
Issues shall not me deter
If love’s perfect and pure
We both should be sure
Passed frontiers
Listen, heart
No turn
Live
Sonnet Knot (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-7-6-5-4-3-2-1)
MORPHOSEMANTIC TRAPEZIUM
April 8, 2024. Nepal.
ARE YOU MINE
You
To my
Thoughts do come
Thoughtful become
I and write to you
My knots and other some
To please you who inhabits
My heart from far is alit
I saw a dream of you
And lost all my wit
I vowed to fill
All with you
My songs
Lieu
Yet the sonnet is not the ceiling of the form. The Pokhrelian Stanza begins at three lines and extends to twenty-five lines—the Vingtet and the Vint-e-Cinque—and it may go further still, to whatever length the writer finds convenient. The syllable pattern simply continues to expand and contract in perfect symmetry, so that a sixteen-line knot unfolds as 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, a thirty-line knot as 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, and so on without limit. The only constants are the mirrored rhyme of the first and last lines and the doubling at the apex.
This is where the form proves itself genuinely generous to the writer. The three-liner compels the discipline of absolute compression—one thought, one breath, no room for ornament. The twenty-five-line knot grants room for meditation, narrative, and argument, while still holding the poem inside a single mirrored frame. And beyond twenty-five lines, the writer is free to keep climbing: the Pokhrelian Stanza does not close the door at any length. It offers adequate—indeed, abundant—freedom to play with words, to sustain an idea across many lines, and to accommodate a poet’s full say without ever abandoning rhyme, symmetry, or the morphosemantic law that gives the form its name.
The freedom, importantly, is not licence. It is freedom within structure—the liberty of a poet who knows exactly where the walls are and can therefore move with confidence inside them. Where blank verse offers the writer unlimited room and no architecture, the Pokhrelian Stanza offers a generous room with a clear architecture. The poet chooses the span; the form guarantees the shape.
The stanza gains additional beauty when the intermediate lines intermittently end-rhyme with one another.
A Comparative Note: Petrarch, Shakespeare, and the Pokhrelian Sonnet
The sonnet has travelled a long road from fourteenth-century Italy to twenty-first-century Nepal, and each tradition has answered a different question about what fourteen lines can do.
The Petrarchan sonnet, named after the Italian poet Petrarch, divides its fourteen lines into an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines). The octave typically rhymes abbaabba, while the sestet follows patterns such as cdecde or cdcdcd, deliberately avoiding a final couplet. The form is built for argument and resolution: the octave poses a problem, the volta arrives at line nine, and the sestet offers a response.
The Shakespearean sonnet reorganises the same fourteen lines into three quatrains and a final couplet, with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg. The English form sacrifices the Petrarchan symmetry of octave-and-sestet for a structure that builds through three distinct stages and lands on an epigrammatic couplet—well suited to Shakespeare’s meditations on time, beauty, and mortality.
The Pokhrelian Sonnet is a different species entirely. It does not divide fourteen lines into octave and sestet, nor into quatrains and couplet. It grows and contracts—the syllabic count rises from one to seven, pauses at the doubled seventh line, and descends to one. The rhyme is not patterned across lines in the Petrarchan or Shakespearean manner; instead, the first and last lines of the stanza mirror each other in rhyme, and the entire poem is held within that single mirrored frame. Where the Petrarchan sonnet is a room with two halves and the Shakespearean sonnet is a staircase of three flights and a final landing, the Pokhrelian Sonnet is a mountain: the poem climbs to its apex and returns, and the meaning is carried as much by the ascent and descent as by any single line.
This is not a rejection of the classical sonnet but an extension of the sonnet principle—fourteen lines, tightly rhymed, closing on a resonant note—into a form where structure itself is meaning. The Pokhrelian Sonnet stands alongside Petrarch’s and Shakespeare’s as a distinct answer to the question of what fourteen lines can become.
The Form in Practice: From the Page to Social Media
The workshop demand for shorter, polysyllabic stanzas did not remain confined to the classroom. It moved onto social media, where poets—myself among them—began publishing poems that open with a longer line and unfold across a sequence of compact, rhymed stanzas. This is where the form has found its widest and most immediate audience.
A clear instance is “POET AND THE WAR” (pattern 3-4-5-5-4-3). The poem opens on the polysyllabic line “I live large / Larger than life” and proceeds through tight stanzas that carry the speaker from survival and ego to war and the fragile hope of restoration. Equally instructive is “THE SLEEPWALKERS” (pattern 5-6-7-8-8-7-6-5), which begins “All useless to fight” and contracts, stanza by stanza, toward the cold finality of “The truth remains cold.” In both, the mirrored rhyme of opener and closer holds the sequence together while the shorter stanzas allow the poem to stretch across a longer meditation.
At the other end of the scale stand the short Knot poems—the Trentet, Pentet, Heptet, Hexet, and Octet—which show the monosyllabic Triangulum and Trapezium in their purest form. Full examples of these patterns appear in my debut article, “Debut of Pokhreli Knot in the Poetry World,” published in Sahitya Post.
This is the form’s true versatility: the same rhyming law that governs the three-line Trentet also governs a fourteen-line Pokhrelian Sonnet or a multi-stanza poem of considerable length. A poet may write an aphorism in three lines or a lyric in thirty, and the knot remains tied in every stanza. It is this combination—brevity available on demand, expanse available when needed, and rhyme never abandoned—that has drawn poets across continents to the #pokhreliknots.
Global Reception and Practice
The Pokhrelian Stanzas have been formally registered with Copyright Nepal under registration number LW-0035. The form was first taught in Nepal in an official workshop in Udayapur, marking a significant step toward its institutional recognition. The International Forum of Literature on Facebook has already witnessed poems by international poets under #pokhreliknots, and the form has been featured in literary magazines and journals across the world, including Atunis Poetry, Sahitya Post, The Silk Road Today, and Swapner Vela Sahitya Patrika. My work has also been published in Revista Poética Azahar from Spain, and my Nepali poems have appeared in Kapan Baneshwar, a literary weekly from Nepal.
Poets around the world have received this structure with appreciation, and some have already begun crafting their poems under #pokhreliknots. The form’s innovation lies in its morphosemantic architecture—where the poem’s syllabic structure directly shapes its meaning—offering a compact, rhymed, and structurally rigorous framework that stands as a distinctive contribution to contemporary poetics.
Selected Poems in Pokhrelian Stanzas
- “POETAND THE WAR” (Pattern 3-4-5-5-4-3)
October 10, 2026. Bhaktapur, Nepal.
I live large
Larger than life
Know how to survive
Living, I have learned
All my egos burned
As I charge
Food and bed
Shed overhead
What more does one need
For what was I made?
Ponder these days
What led me?
Live life free
Life is a spree
Peace, as you call it,
Is dead, you agree?
I’m fine; all die
Leave me free
They pled peace
Nations turned deaf
Many are yours gone
Vain you why bemoan
My heart burns low
Still winds blow
Earth may heal
If hearts yet kneel
Green waits beneath dust
Hope is yet a must
Let love restore
Home once more.
- “THESLEEPWALKERS” (Pattern 5-6-7-8-8-7-6-5)
September 20, 2026. Bhaktapur, Nepal.
All useless to fight
I watch them cross the streets
Across the roads, across lanes
All across the continents wide
Across the globe’s unending tide
In slumber they dream sweet dreams
They march with gloomy sight
They march in the night
On the long pathways
They meet others who walk
Lend companion for a while
You with your reasons reconcile
Yes, let me brood over a while
I am among them all too
So now what I construe
My walk me dismays
No one’s goal intact
Moving insane a fact
Insanity will not wane
I see come again and again
And from this something I do gain
A lesson that all mould
You will never find it
No goal is a fact
The truth is not told
We wander in our dreams
This mystery is unsolved
The reason for your being here
Is hidden in the void we hold
Before this you’ll be dissolved
No answer you will find
The truth remains cold.
A Living, Evolving Form
The Pokhrelian Stanza is not merely a theoretical construct; it is a living, evolving form that continues to grow through the practice of poets worldwide. From the concise Trimetric Knot to the expansive Polysyllabic Stanzas and the fourteen-line Pokhrelian Sonnet, the #pokhreliknots offer a fresh canvas upon which poets can paint their lyrical masterpieces. As the form enters its next phase—with workshops, translations, and a growing body of poems—it stands as a testament to the enduring power of structured, rhymed, and meaning-driven poetry.
I invite poets everywhere to write in this style. It is morphosemantically a new and well-appreciated structure, easy to compose your poems in. The Knot is tied; the poem is released.
References
“Debut of Pokhreli Knot in the Poetry World!” — Sahitya Post, March 26, 2024. https://english.sahityapost.com/debut-of-pokhreli-knot-in-the-poetry-world/
“Delving into the Artistry of Pokhrelian Stanzas (Pokhreli Knots)” — Sahitya Post, April 9, 2024. https://english.sahityapost.com/delving-into-the-artistry-of-pokhrelian-stanzas-pokhreli-knots/
- “SantoshKumar Pokharel e le sue nuove tecniche poetiche” — Non Solo Poesia Arte, March 26, 2025. https://nonsolopoesiarte.art.blog/2025/03/26/santosh-kumar-pokharel-e-le-sue-nuove-tecniche-poetiche/
- “POETAND THE WAR” — The Silk Road Today, October 11, 2026. https://thesilkroadtoday.com/2026/10/11/
- “THESLEEPWALKERS” — The Silk Road Today, September 22, 2026. https://thesilkroadtoday.com/2026/09/22/14455/
- “PoetPokharel Introduces Groundbreaking ‘Pokhrelian Stanzas’ in Udayapur Workshop” — Sahitya Post, November 7, 2025. https://english.sahityapost.com/poet-pokharel-introduces-groundbreaking-pokhrelian-stanzas-in-udayapur-workshop/
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About the Author
Santosh Kumar Pokharel is a multilingual Nepali poet, lyricist, and the inventor of the Pokhrelian Stanzas, also known as the #pokhreliknots. Based in Bhaktapur, Nepal, he has composed several thousand poems, many of them in the structured form he created. The Pokhrelian Stanzas are registered with Copyright Nepal under Registration No. LW-0035. Pokharel has introduced the form through workshops, including a presentation for master’s degree students at Tribhuvan University and the first official workshop in Udayapur, Nepal. His poems and articles on the form have appeared in Atunis Poetry, Sahitya Post, The Silk Road Today, Swapner Vela Sahitya Patrika, and Revista Poética Azahar (Spain), while his Nepali poems have been published in Kapan Baneshwar, a literary weekly from Nepal. Poets across several continents now practise the form, and he continues to write, teach, and promote the Pokhrelian Stanzas worldwide.
