ACTIVITY: Making a Star Field

This week's creative writing club activity was taken from an exercise developed by Christian Bök called Impromptu #16, which was hosted by The Found Poetry Review during a National Poetry Month activity in 2016, and which instructed us about how to create a field of stars based on a found text.

While Bök's exercise suggested using source material from an antiquarian astronomy text, in the interest of time (club members only meet for one hour each week), we used material from Astronomy Books Online. Follow the link above if you want to read more about how the star fields were made or just look at the amazing creations that follow! Don't you wish you were part of it?

ACTIVITY: Found Poem with Anaphora

Write something in which:
- each line begins with "In the end"; and
- complete each line by taking words from the first lines of random books from the shelves of the ABP Library.

we fuel our need for closure

we fuel our need for closure
on a blue surface below us
on words                    we make
shine scream fly sing cry cuss

we're all wonderful
plus we argue blue & fro
you know                    we go where
we recharge                    we share a happening

a happy ending                    a bending
a rainbow of our going & gone
we're on & on & we're full-blown
we will change rise devour fade fiercely

ACTIVITY: Write a Tritina

A tritina is a derivative form of a sestina. The tritina is a ten-line form that consists of three tercets and a concluding line. Like in a sestina, the last word of each line repeats, but in a different order. The final line includes all three of the words. For example:

1
2
3

3
1
2

2
3
1

123 or 321 or any combination thereof.

The numbers represent the words that should be repeated at the end of each line. The final line should include all three words in any order. Our variations may be slightly different, but this is the basic idea.

We tried to write tritinas using a uniform list of words: beat, sage and echo. What can you come up with? If you really want to challenge yourself, try a sestina!

This is a repost of a previous activity. Go here or here and read some other examples...

ACTIVITY: Write about Smoke

In today's meeting, we chose a theme to write about: smoke. Read what we wrote...

ACTIVITY: Found Writing Using Word Strips

Today, I brought some glue sticks and a large collection of word strips--pages of text that had been cut into their individual lines of text. After sifting through them, club members assembled the word strips into visual word collages.

Tami asked how long it took to cut all the paper because, like the computer in "EPICAC" by Kurt Vonnegut, I had brought enough word strips "for the next 500 years." I explained that it was something that a few other teachers and former students worked on many years ago when we had had some free time.

Take a look at our of the results below...

ACTIVITY: Imitation

Today, we imitated "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens. Take a look at the original poem and try to create your own version.

You can see some of our results below. In fact, if you like what you read, please, leave a comment!

ACTIVITY: Write about Change

After the flood and the closing of our home, the LAS Building, we went through quite a few changes. Attending the ABP changes us, as well, so I thought that would be a good theme to tackle this week.

ACTIVITY: List Images w/ Colors

This week, Creative Writing Club members made lists. Imagery is at the heart of good poetry, and making lists of random images often produces surprising results. Also, trying to find a way to look at the things around us--things that, perhaps, on a daily basis, we don't notice too closely--might help us make some kind of discovery about where we can find images and about how to arrange them.

To construct our lists, we walked around the LAS Building and wrote down what we saw. We imposed the constraint of including a color in every observation that we added to our lists. For additional effect, some of us included pictures of our observations.

Read some of our results below...

one black sign and one yellow one across from each other

each blue stair up to the next floor
Yousef's yellow binder
green grass on the other side of the window
a black and yellow pencil
a red mop bucket
some leaves on the dying plant
a picture of a pink crab who is saying,
"Hi! I'm a Crab!"
prayer times in purple
a silver column that reflects everything
the white table with one white paper on it
a package of gold and red Camel cashews
a turquoise button on a power strip
all these flags with white stars and stripes
a red light eyeing me from the wall near the elevator
a silver key
a cream couch that nobody uses

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.

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.

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

ACTIVITY: Acrostic

Today's Creative Writing Club activity focused on a simple form, an acrostic: write something horizontally that has a word or phrase that appears vertically through the text.

two acrostics

ACTIVITY: Erasure

Find an article and delete, mar or remove words to create a new word order. Post a picture of your manipulation. Cite your source.

i fermented cream

fava plastic
we supermarket until well

mash beans

focused beans remember
lentils with dark empty individually ate end things

i’m not sprouted long

lightweight being
black that wrapped mad

glug night incapable

pile beans
our whatever

ginger meal beans and candies

patient eating moved intensely
rice dried ideal colorful

favorite pea simmered red

green gram driving and garlic cannellini
pigeon beans chiles tomatoes cilantro

a family in mung

--
Text taken from an article that appeared in the New York Times Magazine entitled "The Comfort in Stockpiling Dried Beans" by Tejal Rao and manipulated using the Cut-Up Machine from Language is a Virus.

ACTIVITY: Recipe

Write an alternative recipe...

ACTIVITY: Create a Star Field

This week's creative writing club activity was taken from an exercise developed by Christian Bök called Impromptu #16, which was hosted by The Found Poetry Review during a National Poetry Month activity last year, and which instructed us about how to create a field of stars based on a found text.

While Bök's exercise suggested using source material from an antiquarian astronomy text, in the interest of time (club members only meet for one hour each week), we used material from Astronomy Books Online. Follow the link above if you want to read more about how the star fields were made or just look at the amazing creations that follow! Don't you wish you were part of it?