Poetic forms in Toki Pona
I enjoy reading and writing original poetry in Toki Pona! In my years I have identified lots of poetic forms that work very well in Toki Pona. Some of them are very common, and some of them aren't. This is a page where I can talk about some of my favorites; it is by no means an exhaustive list.
Geometric Forms (nasin nimi leko)
Geometric forms are poetic forms that use the monospace geometry of sitelen pona. When done right, these forms can be an absolute treat, showing prowess over not just the language and content of the words but the shapes as well. They work best when authors use re-occuring visual motifs, such as dots, hooks, circles, or lines, that appear within the poem to convey an extra layer of depth that may not be present in sitelen Lasina.
leko nimi
leko nimi is the most common form that falls into this category, and it is one that I came up with. It consists of four lines of four words each. When written in sitelen pona, it renders as a 4x4 square of words, hence leko nimi. Some people say that leko nimi should be able to be read vertically and horizontally; I would say this is secondary to having aesthetically pleasing forms. I also do not think that leko nimi need to be a 4x4 square, it is just an arbitrary number that I have chosen that happens to work very well. If you have not written a lot of poetry in Toki Pona and would like to, I would recommend giving this a try!
I have a page dedicated to some of the leko nimi that I have written, which you can view here!
Letter squares and syllable squares are related forms. These work best with sitelen Lasina and sitelen sitelen, respectively. Letter squares-- being in Latin script-- don't capture beauty in visual form quite as well as the humble leko nimi. I am unfortunately not familiar enough with sitelen sitelen to appreciate the beauty of syllable squares.
akesi li wile lon nena
akesi li wile lon nena is a story by jan Kita made for the 2022 edition of utala musi pi ma pona. I am not sure if it is a poem. However, to me, it is a very good story and has an interesting form and so I should mention it here. The story is made up of 120 sentences of five words each, arranged in a long line vertically.
Non-Geometric Forms (nasin nimi nasa)
Aside from geometric forms, there are non-geometric ones as well. To me, these feel a bit less "pona" but are still interesting in their own right.
Haiku
Haiku is a Japanese form with three lines, using a 5-7-5 pattern of morae. A mora in Toki Pona is simply a consonant-vowel pair or coda -n. For instance, the word linja is three morae: li-n-ja. Because of the focus on counting symbols, they are somewhat related to the geometric forms. However, they also include extra components that create a stricter format; for more information, see this Toki Pona Haiku Guide by jan Pensa.
Juxtapoem (toki musi jasima)
Juxtapoem is an original form created by jan Mali. It is a fairly strict fill-in format-- akin to a didactic cinquain-- which contrasts two different things. For more information, see the sona pona article.
Double-column poem
This is the form kala pona Tonyu and I used when writing ona li monsuta e jan.