April seems determined to continue, which means it's still:
You will have a change to write poetry even if you've never done it before—the writing prompts aim to demystify the process of writing a poem. This will not take the place of the 2020 Writing Exercise Series, but will be in addition to it, so there will be a bounty of poetry to feast your eyes upon.
So. Let's begin.
April 9, 2020
National Poetry Month 2020 Activity Pack Day 9
1) Patrick Stewart is an absolute treasure. He's been reading Shakespearean sonnets every day, here is a video of him reading Sonnet #2, which he indicates is one of his favorites. It's a great way to start, even if I normally push more contemporary verse.
And since we saw Professor X read a sonnet, why not get good ol' Doctor Who aka David Tennant in to read Shakespeare's most famous sonnet, #18
2) On about the opposite end of the spectrum of awesome poetry, here is a recording of Saul Williams performing his poem "Ohm" at a 1996 poetry SLAM. I love Saul Williams, and while most of his performances are much more... well, performative—I like the slower pacing here—which is still not slow by any means, but for those not used to fast-talking may have a hard time with some of his other performances. If you enjoy this, definitely google around, he's a super talented artist and we both apparently fell in love with Stephen Wright at like 12, which is wild. I read his first book s√he at least a dozen times.
And to bounce back around, here is poet Stevie Smith talking briefly about inspiration and reading her free verse poem from the early 70s "Not Waving But Drowning". If you'd like to read more about the poem and poetPoetry Foundation has a nice 'Poem Guide'.
3) Now go read one, or preferably all of the following three 'recently' published poems:
"“Picking green almond, in Syria” (2008)" by Heather Bourbeau in Duende April 2020.
"Ghetto Gold" by Carolanne Conerly Griffin winner of Gemini Magazine's 2020 Poetry Open Prize.
"The Water in the Water" by Johanna Dong in Tinderbox Poetry Journal Volume 6 Number 3.
4) Go read all of the following three short poems that were published more than two years ago:
5) Today's "Buried Poem" game is one of my own devising (and in this case, my own writing). A "Buried Poem" is the opposite of an erasure poem in that you take a short famous poem, and greatly expand the wordcount, thus creating your own original piece. An original piece, which, someone could make an erasure poem of that would reveal that famous poem (ie, no re-arranging or changing the words, only adding). You will want to be adding at very least 3x the original word count, if not much more. (I wrote a 'buried poem' piece but decided I wanted to submit it so I haven't included it here, but I titled it "Our Very First Shared Fig Newton" and it's about a young romance. These pieces can take any unexpected direction so just run with them!)
6) Now it's time to write your own "Buried Poem". Take the following short Ezra Pound poem and expand it into your own piece which is at least 100 words long, but keep all the words from Pound's poem in their current order, just with other words in between them. You can use "by Ezra Pound" in the piece or you can exclude it. (Hint for the quiz above: I excluded the poet's name which was very telling and would give away the game.)
In the Station of the Metro
by Ezra Pound
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
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(Highlight the block to see the answers to yesterday's Name That Poet game (if you missed it, click here to go back first and see if you can figure the poets out for yourself from the series of more progressively telling clues): Poet A: Sara Teasdale, and Poet B: Percy Bysshe Shelley)
