ACTIVITY: Found Poetry using Anaphora

Today's writing activity emphasized a process.

Each line of your response should begin with "Start with...". In the library, choose a book, go to a specific page, go down to a specific line, and record words from that line. Repeat the same process using a different book. List of as many as possible. The results are your found poem.

For example, I chose to use expressions, phrases and words from page sixteen and line 17 of each book that I selected.

start with this again

start with these extravagant statements
start with instinct
start with chorus
start with attempt
start with roots
start with something entirely magical
start with a child who'd gone to a party
start with the sunken quarry
start with fiddling transactions outside the law
start with the knife between your shoulder blades
start with doing well in life
start with vigor
start with and for youth
start with this baptism
start with the way your mind is running
start with a hearty laugh
start with love
start with a few sparse trees
start with me

Start with...

Start with where he picked it up.

Start with the effort to write.

Start with being eloquent.

Start with a claim you're making.

Start with expressing their thoughts.

Start with their lies.

Start without title

start with start

start with policing

start with relief

start with producing

start with diagnosis

start with severe

start with who?

start with fate

start with explaining

start with ethics

Start with

Start with the world's such a very wide place
Start with a large rose tree near the entrance of the garden
Start with water in the arid land
Start with the olive tree
Start with the internal divisions
Start with a taciturn, colourless way
Start with details
Start with old Babylonian scribes
Start with a pain slashed at her heart
Start with the rules
Start with many mysteries
Start with: it would be foolish to pretend that everyone fully understands

Start with...

Start with changes should not be made.
Start with note.
Start with I shall never forget.
Start with I tell the others.
Start with frequency distributions.
Start with you take this very seriously.
Start with Penguin Island.
Start with flamboyant enough to serve.
Start with a nickname.
Start with help another.
Start with the timidity.
Start with law of our fathers.
Start with one more pull.
Start with women.

ACTIVITY: Write a Villanelle

This week, we learned how to write a villanelle. You can read instructions from last year, do your own internet answer quest, or look at our results below.

Assemble

assemble
take apart
with your hands
everything starts and stops
with your lips
speak

assemble
the songs of nonsense
rush the sunrise a little more stark
it's midnight dark
you're sat across
on your mark

assemble
thoughts
a spotlight
an eternity
your shadows look like art
a god

assemble
you marry your hands
cold stares
a single beating heart
unhinged your jaws
in a tank with a shark

assemble
pointed index
spit flies in the air
white noise
lean in with the chair
on this trip we embark

assemble
clutched fists
listening to the entity
smiling calmly
uninterrupted
bark

assemble
whimpered profanity
screams with a mighty gust of dust from Noah's ark
temper
clock ticking gentler
take your time

assemble
the mouthpart
touch don't look
skin is sacred
don't get too hooked
words are darts

assemble
the board across
looks exchanged
minds made
behold
pick a card

assemble
the execution
mind tricks
vocal illusion
loud and weak
the modern day patriarch

You Break All You Hold

You break all you hold
in your hand in a room you see
in your mind. You are cold.

You were told
it would not be a dream to flee.
You break all you hold,

grow moss. Old-
fashioned. An eternity
in your mind. You are cold-

blooded. A dud you sold
to nobody. All free,
your gold. All you hold

and take back. You rolled
down into a pit, the sea
in your mind. You are cold

black water. You mold
over your knee.
You break all you hold.
In your mind, you are cold.

Villanelle

As I sat down to write a poem
No spark, just rhyme as phloem
The desk rose up in anger

Dark words and senseless clangour
A rotten time of mist and rowan
As I sat down to write a poem

I pecked stale bread in fruitless hunger
The pen broke up, a dismal omen
The desk rose up in anger

The stanza tightened like a strangler
Ideas spilled, not mine but stolen
As I sat down to write a poem

All dancing, shrinking but also growing
Ideas flooding, out of langour
The desk rose up in fruitless anger

My writing net again is flowing
Fishing for words, a busy angler

As I sat down to write a poem
The desk rose up no more in anger

Look at you… Oh! So, beautiful!

Look at you!

The way you feel

Oh! So, beautiful!

Like rise and shine;

In the blue skies!

Look at you!

A smile worthwhile -

So pure at sight!

Oh! So, beautiful!

Full’a good ole joy -

During good times.

Look at you!

Laughing every moment-

Yet hidden from sight!

Oh! So, beautiful!

Full of warmth -

In my little heart

Look at you!

Oh! So, beautiful

Misunderstood I May Be

Misunderstood I may be,
I try to convince myself,
it breaks me.

Mind's been full, so lately.
How could I address?
Misunderstood I may be,

I have nothing to confess.
My feelings, my thoughts they faze me.
It breaks me.

I try to open up,
I hate it.
Misunderstood I may be.

What can I do to stop this?
How could I speak so clearly?
It breaks me.

You try to comfort me,
I fade slowly.
Misunderstood I may be.
It breaks me.

I count the hours and the days

I count the hours and the days,

as they count me

and the silence that has been washing upon my ears

I observe as the sun kisses the sky,

and the time that walks by,

as I count the hours and the days.

Still, I find, it is of no use

to wish upon the sun or the stars,

or the silence that has been washing upon my ears

Staring at the ocean’s blue,

It watches my tedious hues,

while I count the hours and the days

It begins to sigh and sympathize,

and with its waves it washes upon me,

and upon the silence that has been washing upon my ears.

Yet nonetheless, I thrive on the rain that falls

upon the ground

as I count the hours and the days

and the silence that has been washing upon my ears.

Sleep deprived & unready to mingle

contemplating
mind is pacing
nothing worthy of replacing
all in place
all in chaos
can't remember what I'm retracing
hallucinating manipulation
twisting every conversation
warping the situation
what do you think of me?
badly, repulsed, erasing
sleepless in the belly of a sleeping beast
waking up early
regurgitating his feast
why in a hurry for tireless chasing
vacant stares through liquid haze
lost in the experimental maze
nothing genuine
who am I racing
dreading life in existential angst & uninterested in engaging
reminiscing, vintage ads about anti-aging 

ACTIVITY: Insomnia

Do you have sleepless nights? How do you deal with them? What keeps you up at night? Today's activity focused on this theme.

We met, as usual, pooled our ideas together and then voted for one that we would all work on, which was insomnia. Read our responses below...

Observing a new reflection

A shallow gaze
was enough to uncover the
opaquely pain-glazed heart that
carried mountains of sorrow & melancholy
lifted the weight of all
the ocean has in store
as epochs of misery blurred out your vision
of what your body carried which is
more than its tangible heft
engraved cuts, too muddied to make out the
words they wrote
as the stretch of your skin
fell frail against your frame
like drapery on an easel
what has become of your soul
when its light had been so dimmed it's
now flickering like your rapid dreams
you no longer have seams
what was it like before they turned your
flares into mere flames
and your sunny weather
a raging storm
I see beyond the horizon a glimmer of
a child once born free until
the ropes pulled tighter and told you to
-be-
before it all came to this
before your eyes landed on me
what do your wings hide between the
folds of each feather
why does your tongue lie so graciously
do untangle your fields of memories
set them ablaze and unto the clouds of
smoke you breathe

bloodshot eyes

he murdered his mind

gambling his life

on a journey through time

he begs for a visit

but the Sandman refuses

he tries to kick out the demons 

because they're intrusive 

he cries for a visit

since he's lost sight of his sanity

Batibat stole his spirit 

and his sense of humanity 

Under the pouring night, I lay afraid

of the bed, and of the monster I have made.

My thoughts wander through the densest of clouds;

I think of death, and his scythe.

My ears hear the faintest of whispers;

they hear harmonious melodies of desperation, and

with that euphonious symphony, I sway.

I sway as I watch the monster at the corner,

and I am afraid, and I am serene.

I am sane, and I am insane.

Under the sky of June, I lay afraid

of my mind, and of the malevolent things it thinks of,

and as I think of death, I cannot close my eyes,

for Death may grab me by life,

and walks away with a soul that was mine.

Poemeostasis

The lack of death

In tonight’s bed of wealth

With an inability

To break reality

Where one enters

Into the dreamland

Of love and horror

One that is full of sorrow

Why haft you not

Let me enter this

World of magic

With no mages in the page

I demand that thou shakily

Release me into a fake –

And extreme reality

For my stories lie

In my tower of ice

On a desk of spice

And my people are mice

Who need me as guide

For I – the master of this world

Now stuck in a paralysis

In another dimension of cold

With open eyes within stasis

Not sleeping, fuming

I'm ready

Eyelids dropping like waterfalls

On both sides of the un-cross-able

Tired tears take their toll

They roll

Switch snap flick

Light flickering

Caught in the nick

Of time

Enzyme of sleep

Not yet deep

No first or second coming

Furiously humming

A lullaby

How stars twinkle in the sky

Why can't I?...

Wrestling with not resting

Smothering duvet testing

Patience/impatience nesting

In the softness of the silk

Maybe some warm milk

Whiteness easing

The passing of time 

No, it's just teasing

Doze-free crime

No falling there quickly

 It's me

In my un-falling state of mind

On pillows stacked too thickly

Wanting to be

there where 

I'm not

So what?

Yet

Nothing's set

All night threat

my son gets up

gets water
gets into our bed
gets us mad
he scatters
goes to his room
back to his bed
starts to hum
hm-hm-hmmmmm-hmmmmmmmmm-hm-hm
stops

starts again
my wife shouts for silence
she tries to read
there is a moment of silence

"it's too hot!"
my son shares
from his room
turns the light on
eventually quiets

my wife looks at me
after a while
"go check"
her eyes say
mine say
"in a minute"

Questions

Does your soul long for mine 

between the crackling flames of time

or does your ego need some stroking

and your body a place to find

do you seek love in strangers' skeletons

folding over with the tides

do you feel the wavelengths of agony between you and I

do you miss the weight of the look in my eyes

or do yours wander beneath the surface 

and skip between the lines

do you welt in the passing moments

waiting to reignite the ties

or do you tell me that you miss me knowing it's a lie

I keep searching for places in you that

only exist in my mind

if there isn't a way for me to reach you

might as well let it die

do you believe the way I bleed 

or is my need for solace a crime

do you keep yourself on the highest shelf

just to watch me as I cry

I cried an ocean for those eyes 

they sunk so deep as if you put them out to dry

vulnerability, is it too hard for you to try

show me the string I can latch on to

it isn't fun loving blind

ACTIVITY: Search Results Found Writing

The Creative Writing Club activity this week started with a Google search. We chose two words to use as our search terms ('hands' and 'window'), entered them into the search field and then arranged, collaged or otherwise manipulated the results from our searches to form a piece of writing. Read the results below...

cloud products

my cynicism had evaporated

a visible symbol of the pressures
paralyzed by superstitious dread

you don't need a savior
to wear a disposable glove

Alice
in a gesture of wordless comfort
using various washing methods
doesn't correspond with your hand's actual location

in the downstairs bathroom
in a basked from a window
in the wall
in the glass industry

be someone who reaches out to know and serve others
learn more about vectors
contagious viral illness
blood splatter and a corner
of her pillow

Executing a poet

A window
into soul;
Transparent
White
Vessel
All hands on deck
He asked us to be his hands
Praying hands
Touching glass with bare hands
Incredible moments

Stop heat and glare
Eyes discontinued
Idle
Breaking glass
Bloody hands
Spilled blood

He was lowered in a basket
From a window in the wall
A man leapt
Rage
Firefighters caught him
He was suicidal
A poet in the revolution
Fastening the screw
Homemade execution
Window closing