Poetry Formats

Square poems

leko nimi

The archetypical leko nimi is a short poem in sitelen pona consisting of an equal amount of lines and words per line forming a square. The poem can then be read both horizontally (usually left-to-right) and vertically (usually top-to-bottom). How strict these rules apply to a particular poem is up to the author.

In an informal emoji reaction poll on the Discord server ma pona pi toki pona, 19 respondants knew about the format already, while 51 were new to the format. 7 reported having made one.

• 'tomo moku' - jan Likipi
• - kule epiku Atawan
• toki mus pi nasin tu - tan jan Ke Tami (p.12)
• leko nimi - tan jan Ali (p.12) (4 different ones)
• - tan waso Pini lon kulupu pi wawa sewi

Letter squares

There are 39 possible letter squares with each line and each row being exactly one word, if used with Linku words (with 2022 data)

Syllable squares

• There are 335 possible syllable squares with each line and each row being exactly one word, and an additional 91 squares if coda "n" gets counted separately (moraically), if used with Linku words (with 2022 data)
• kiwen lukin - tan jan Kuleku Nena (p.13) is an example with more than one word per line