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...

An Assortment of Discontinuous Dreams

Credit: authenticafricanbronzesandceramics

An Assortment of Discontinuous Dreams

     I dreamed Warhead Detonator.

I dreamed the metal artworks of Benin and Ife,

                                I dreamed Urotoxic,

I dreamed moderate delegates fought, 

I dreamed, we don't know what happened...

I dreamed out in the Darkness.

I dreamed upon liability without fault.

I dreamed, with a tempo like a religious prayer.

I dreamed vocal jazz, with costumes and choreography.

I dreamed, "GET ME OUTSIDE!"

I dreamed anything can be collected into a set.

I dreamed...Multiple suicide stab wounds...

I dreamed. Indeed it was unclear...

I dreamed as the blood beat the skin...

I dreamed...Now lets try again...

I dreamed... she blushed again...

-Aly Zein Mohamed

Activity: Anaphora

When the beginning of each line is the same, it is called anaphora. This week, each line had to begin with "I dreamed" and was completed by finding random phrases and words from books in the library. Read some of the results below...

I dreamed the plays of Shakespeare.

I dreamed I don't get back home to my wife.
I dreamed a young philosophy student.
I dreamed Dr. Smith has poor bedside manner.
I dreamed tonal progressions begin and end at the borders of forms.
I dreamed I remember.
I dreamed in the introduction.
I dreamed and then you would like me.
I dreamed there was something hidden inside the Game Boy.
I dreamed before placing a tube cake in the cake server.
I dreamed the earlier experiments had shown that neural adequacy requires about 500 milliseconds for completion.
I dreamed I must stop this whole thing.
I dreamed he had been stupid.
I dreamed nothing miraculous after all.
I dreamed she and her two friends were being harassed.
I dreamed people who ain't too clever.
I dreamed by the rival treasure hunters.
I dreamed demilitarized.
I dreamed after every mass extinction.
I dreamed because it speaks to the secret.
I dreamed it used to be believed.
I dreamed they stopped to rest.

that fluttery birdy-bird feeling that's love

that fluttery birdy-bird feeling that's love
or whatever it is somewhere somehow dot dot dot
rains down every never-ending incessant sometimes

in such and such a season without reason
without wings or wishes or whatnot
that fluttery birdy-bird feeling that's love

above all big and tall tediums and mediums
or even a little itsy-bitsy teeny tiny small knot
rains down every never-ending incessant sometimes

and whew     it's not enough     i need more
all the time     i'm fine     how are you not
that fluttery birdy-bird feeling that's love

or another language     it's where we live
and what we are and what we thought
rains down every never-ending incessant sometimes

and in some way we fly or cry or hold on
or let go of it when we have fought
that fluttery birdy-bird feeling that's love
rains down every never-ending incessant sometimes

ACTIVITY: Spaghetti Strip Found Poems

Magazine articles were cut into word strips. Club members took handfuls of word strips and arranged them into spaghetti strip found poems. See there results below...

Words were taken from National Geographic magazine articles from October 2016 through June 2016.

The Book offered few clues

ACTIVITY: Ten by 10 by X by

Start at a book in the library. Turn to the tenth page. Count down to the tenth line and copy down the line and the source. Repeat the process ten times.

When finished, use the words as your "word bank" and collage something together.

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

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

Write a Cinquain

My graphic organizer on the whiteboard.

Wikipedia indicates that a cinquain is a poetic form that uses a 5-line pattern. There are different variations of the form, but we worked with the following structure:

Line 1: 2
Line 2: 4
Line 3: 6
Line 4: 8
Line 5: 2

Each line should include the number of syllables or, if that proved too difficult, words to include in each line. For an added twist, we added lines in reverse order to create a butterfly cinquain:

Line 1: 2
Line 2: 4
Line 3: 6
Line 4: 8
Line 5: 2
Line 6: 8
Line 7: 6
Line 8: 4
Line 9: 2

The explanation might not be clear, but, perhaps, by looking at what we made, it might become clearer.

I Am...

Club members moved around the LAS Building and found an object. Then they wrote about how that object sees the world. As an added challenge, students took a picture of the object.

sometimes

you look at me and see your reflection
or you see what's on the other side

i let the sun in during the day
the moon at night

nothing else may pass
unless i am broken

Write an Alternative Recipe

Write your alternative recipe--not a recipe for food, but for something else.

Exquisite Corpse Poem

Last week we wrote an exquisite corpse poem. Each line had to contain one of the following words: crash, flower, canvas, snap, turn or sleep.

Noor Al Thani
SomayaDorzadeh
Bob Marcacci

silence crashed down around us
the flowers are colorful in the forest
like the colors used in a canvas
in a field of flowers
sometimes we have to turn back to make up things
like restoring an artwork or a blank canvas
whose turn was it? she thought
sleeping eight hours a day is what makes you fresh in the morning

*

I always draw nature on a canvas
to me it resembles sleep
we turn over in our sheets and dream
students sleep late every day to finish their homework
crashing instantly afterwards
a sleeping cat rushed out from under the table
drawing on canvas is what makes your art beautiful
it resembles flowers full of life and color

*

their stems snapped and left its part behind
we slept on the fragments
the driver crashed his car while driving
driving over the breathtaking flowers
I thought, "this would make a great snap" and took out my phone
I do not take snaps because I think it is a waste of time
it drives me away from sleep and ruins my eyes
snaps the cord and reminds me who I really am

Make a List of Things in Your Room

For our first meeting, Creative Writing Club members wrote lists of things in our bedrooms as ways of introducing ourselves.

Eyman's list...

one white standing desk

one black table that is used as a desk
a leather chair
a laptop computer and a desktop computer
an orange table lamp
a small wooden jewelry box with little porcelain drawers
a pile of white cords
a rough rug
a king-size bed with a white bedspread and little blue and green flowers on it
a calendar of old Italian movie posters above the desk
a footstool with cushions
a red Chinese stuffed animal that looks like a cat, one head on both ends
a pile of books
an open magazine
a ceramic pencil cup that my son painted
two red shelves lined with books
some Italian textbooks
some English books
a desert rose
a mirror