Tony Curtis Villanelle workshop

The villanelle was developed by the French from an earlier Italian folk-song form. Its exact origins as a formal poetry discipline are arguable, but it was certainly becoming established in late 15th-century France, and had been adopted by English language poets by the end of the 19th century. Many notable poets have worked within the form: Oscar Wilde, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, WH Auden, Dannie Abse, Paul Muldoon, William Empson, even the singer-poet Leonard Cohen