I used an app that generates lists of random words which, sort of like magnetic poetry, you pull together. There’s a certain disconnected nature to this kind of poetic construction that gives it an interesting disjointed flow around the connections between words and ideas. The app does not have clip art, so you have to pull in your own. I used this image from my collection of screen saver files.
Peace (in the poem),
Kevin
My friend, Mary Lee Hahn, over at A Year of Reading, is hoping to inspire us to write poems this month by focusing our attention on the Wonders of the World, and I am curious. I know it is cliche to write poems in April, but what the heck … writing poems at any time is always worth it.
I know her first prompt this morning is about the Pyramid of Giza, but I was writing about the idea of wonder, and realized that if you turned this poem on its side, it was a building.
wonders:
the world unfolding;
overlapping architects
weave ideas from strands of silk,
composed of words, image, sound
while designers of this flowing media fabric
add unexpected edges and rich unknown colors
which we work to wrap around ourselves
sheltered in the experience of the past;
overlapping dreamers in
the world unfolding;
wonders.
Peace (in the poems),
Kevin
This was a different kind of writing activity for the #ds106 Daily Create: write a poem with rhymes at the start of each line. That sounds easier than it is, because what happens is the rhythm gets all crooked in the poem. As I wrote mine, I started to rhyme at the end of each couplet, too. I couldn’t help myself, so you have this overlapping rhyming scheme taking place in my poem.
And this kind of poem deserves some voice, I think.
Audio recording and upload >>
Peace (in the poem),
Kevin
(This is part of the Slice of Life Challenge with Two Writing Teachers. We write about small moments each and every day for March. You come, too. Write with us.)
I didn’t even know she was there, in the audience. It was only later, after she tweeted out some pictures of my band playing at the regional fair one hot summer day that I understood that she had, indeed, made the drive, paid the admission for the fair, watched us perform, and then left before I could come out and say hello.
@dogtrax Packed house! pic.twitter.com/iEIeJ6q0
— Jenn Cook (@cookout70) September 1, 2012
Yesterday, I learned that my friend, Jenn Cook, the director of the Rhode Island Writing Project, had been killed in a terrible accident on Friday. It’s difficult to express the sadness, even though we only met in person a few times. Our online interactions over music and writing and technology and just plain humorous anecdotes made Jenn a person I looked for in my online spaces.
The loss hang heavy over me.
Yesterday, I went to her Twitter feed, as a way to move backwards in her timeline. You might think it sort of odd to do that but I found it comforting to be reading her lines and seeing her images, and feeling her presence. Her last posts were about taking care of her ailing father, but there were pictures of dogs and snow and making digital compositions, and teaching pre-service teachers. Not long ago, Jenn and I were fellow guests on a NWP Radio program about the Making Learning Connected MOOC, where Jenn was a participant who used the ethos of CLMOOC to transform her writing project’s work. As always, she was articulate and passionate and excited about learning.
How does one keep the presence of an online friend alive after they have gone? I don’t know. I’ve set up a Team in my Kiva site, to start funneling donations to needy projects in Jenn’s name. I invite you to join me with the ForJenn team, but I will be happy even if it a team of one (me), for each time donations go out, I will be reminded of Jenn. I will be looking for education and youth projects to support, and if there is a musical element, even better. She would have liked that.
And a prose poem, too. How else to deal with loss than with some words in verse?
forJenn by Dogtrax
Peace (in the mourning),
Kevin
I found myself diving down one of those writing rabbit holes yesterday morning as I began exploring some of the “add-ons” that are now available in Google Drive. One of the free programs — WebSequenceDiagrams — creates flowcharts, with a little sequential coding.
I wondered if there was a way to write a poem in a flowchart format? Could the ideas of the poem be represented visually and with connections back and forth? So, I gave it a go.
From A to B and Back Again: A Flowchart of a Poem
This verse emerged
as I went in reverse …
from ideas
to words
to poems
to publishing
to comments
to collaboration
to poems
to words
to ideas
all the way back to where I first started,
opening the door here
for you.
Interesting, eh? But does it work as a poem? I’m not sure the diagram flows exactly as I had it in mind, and that might be limited by the free version of the add-on, as much as my own lack of understanding flow charts. Still … intriguing possibilities.
Peace (in the visual),
Kevin
Not a single person has complained about my periodic “lifting of lines” from people in the Slice of Life Challenge. But still, I feel like I need to if not defend, then at least explain, what I am doing when I lift lines (steal phrases) from other bloggers. By writing about it here, I am trying to name it. By naming it, I am trying to see if it has legs for learning.
You know what I mean? (Note to self: your defense is off to a murky start)
Katherine even wrote a comment here at my blog after I left a poem at her blog:
There is beauty,
in the words you lift.
A second life found
inside of your lines.
Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app
When I “lift lines” from Slice of Life posts, I am borrowing a phrase of words from the post, and constructing a poem around those words. I am deeply reading the slice. Meanwhile, I am also putting on my poet’s hat. Where is the “center of gravity” for me in the post? What words leap out in my mind as I read? What’s the nuance I bring to the post as a reader? These are the internal questions that go through my head. I think it started when I got tired of writing comments for Slice of Life folks that seemed genuine but rather boring. As teacher, we learn to say ‘good job’ and ‘nicely done’ in many different ways, but with fellow teachers, I wanted something more.
I want to play with words, to make my comments sing in a rhythm of their own, and I want my comments to enliven the conversations.
In a sense, my “line lifting” is nothing more than remixing, right? It’s not plagiarism, is it? I don’t think so. I am never stealing and using without attribution, and in fact, the poetic responses are published right with the post itself, as a way to honor the writer. And I do it to respect their ideas, and maybe bring a new perspective from the outside poet. Interestingly, as a writer, I find that some of my poems are clear partners to the text; Others, are distant cousins. Often, it may be that only I see the connections. This is part of the text wrestling that goes on between writer anc reader, and how online spaces both close that gap and make it more complicated.
The concept of “line lifting” came from somewhere else — Gosh, I can’t remember now, and I am sure someone gave me the idea. It may have been Margaret who named it for me after I did my work with some of her students’ poems — and I used the phrase “stealing lines” at some point, too. Names matter. I sort of like the alliterative tone of “lifting lines.”
I am sure we are all stealing, borrowing and grabbing ideas from one another, and I, for one, am all in favor of that free flow of ideas. During the #rhizo14 class, I even started a whole project called Steal This Poem (go on, it’s still there for the taking) and watched with wonder as others did just that — stole my words and made beautiful new works of art from it.
In my head, I am happy when I find that line in someone’s post that works just right, and resonates with me. The poem will flow, and I just sort of watch it happen. And I suspect that a blogger who writes, hits publish, finds people have read their writing … I imagine that they will be pleased to find a poem in the mix — a small morsel of words and rhythm — with the rest of the comments. And, if I am lucky, it will bring a smile to someone’s day, if only for the moment it takes to read a few lines inspired by your own writing. Maybe it will inspire a poem by others, too. Now, that would be a gift.
April will bring the whole “poem in a pocket” idea. I’d prefer to “lift lines” in March and leave small poems scattered about like seeds in the wind. I hope you catch a poem yourself one of these days and find a line that inspires you. Be a remixer of ideas and see what happens.
So, does this translate into classroom practice? Yes, it will, and when we move into poetry later this year, I will be bringing this concept of “lifting lines” to my students, using other poems and stories as fodder for creative ideas. What better way to foster readers who read carefully and writers who engage in “conversation” with other writers?
Peace (your honor, the poet thief rests),
Kevin
(This is part of the Slice of Life Challenge with Two Writing Teachers. We write about small moments each and every day for March. You come, too. Write with us.)
I had a student come up with this in his hand, complaining that he could not get it into the sharpener.
Well, of course. It’s a bit small to be writing with, don’t you think? I watched him, amazed at his focus on the sharpening. But by then, the pencil was even a bit too small for him. He ended up using one of my tiny hand-held sharpeners and then agreed to trade his teeny little pencil in for a full-size brand-new pencil, although he did it rather warily, as if he had spent a lot of time and energy to this pencil just right and its size represented the amount of words that he had written out.
The funny thing is, this is not unusual — this small pencil syndrome. And it is almost always boys. I can’t explain it. But I can write a poem inspired by it.
Peace (in the writing of small posts),
Kevin
A collection of tappable poems inspired by Slice of Life posts.
Peace (in the morn),
Kevin
(This is part of the Slice of Life Challenge with Two Writing Teachers. We write about small moments each and every day for March. You come, too. Write with us.)
Yesterday morning, I did my daily “tour” of other folks engaged in the Slice of Life. Part of the month-long adventure is not just sharing, but also connecting through comments. But I decided to go at it a bit differently yesterday. Instead of leaving prose, I stole lines from people’s posts and built poetry out of those stolen lines, and then left the poems as comments for my fellow Slicers.
I didn’t think too much or too deep about it. Instead, I read the post, tried to find that “center of gravity” and then used those words as the basis for a free-form poem, moving around the perimeter of the theme. It was interesting, reading and writing, and then moving on. Later in the day, I noticed that a few folks mentioned on Twitter how fun it was to find my poems, like little wordy surprises sprinkled around our Slice of Life community.
Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app
I took the poems that I had left (I remembered to make notes of where I had been so I didn’t get lost) and created this collection in Prezi. Thank you to the bloggers who unknowingly inspired me to write my poems, and I hope the comments as poetry were a nice little surprise for you.
Peace (in the poems),
Kevin
