Poetry Challenge #184-Pathya Vat

This wasn’t my idea. Cindy’s foray into form brought up Cambodia. But, as prompt’s do, it set me on a journey. In 2006 as Jill Max (the name Ronnie Davidson and I use for co-authored work) STRANGERS IN BLACK (Royal Fireworks Press) a memoire of a boy’s struggle to survive in Khmer Rouge controlled Cambodia was published. We wrote it, with “Mok,” through his eyes and memory, without having visited Cambodia—or ever imagining we could—because then, and well into the 90s, Cambodia was closed off from the rest of the world.

Four years of weekly meetings with the half Vietnamese-half Cambodian man that Mok had become (a man afraid to use his real name for fear of retaliation by Khmer Rouge sympathizers), 4 years of research, reading translations of mostly French texts and pouring over photos—before a draft was written.

And then, 3 years after the type was set, the unimaginable happened: I visited Cambodia, what’s more, Siem Reap! The city, the region, perhaps the very village where our book began, and to the massive temple of Anchor Wat, an architectural, engineering marvel Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime touted as the reason to purge Cambodia ne Kampuchea from all foreign influence—and kill more than 2 million people in the process (read Haing Ngor’s Survival in the Killing Fields; watch The Killing Fields). Here are a few images of the land that inspired this foray into Cambodian poetic form.

Poetry Challenge #184

Pathya Vat

A Pathya Vat is a form of poetry from Cambodia. It is a four-line poem with four syllables on each line. The second and third lines rhyme.  

You can string multiple Pathya Vats together to make a longer poem the same way you can connect several haikus. If you have multiple verses, the last word on line 4 becomes the rhyme for lines 2 & 3 in the next verse. 

Pathya Vat poems are usually spoken or sung. Originally intended to be memorized, so the short lines and rhyme helped the performer. Usually, Pathya Vat are about nature.

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Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 1800 days ago! We now take turns creating our own prompts to share with you. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.

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