The terza rima is a particularly charming Italian verse form that sits neatly in any poet’s repertoire of styles, and is the form required for our next competition. Meaning third rhyme, this chain-rhymed piece interweaves its chiming sounds among the stanzas. Although its use by Italian troubadours predates him, Dante Alighieri is recognised as the first poet to apply the form to a long poem, in his written early in the fourteenth century. Where Dante used an eleven-syllable line,
