My First Workshop

OK, I've been to poetry workshops, but that was the first time I'd run one - co-hosting with Ben Lawrence (poet, friend, beard, quidditch champion) on the theme of Oulipo. If you don't know what Oulipo is, it's a contraction of Ouvroir de littérature potentielle which roughly translates as "workshop of potential literature" (so, technically this was a workshop-workshop meta-thingie) where writing constraints are used to inspire new writing. Founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais, it started as was a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who sought to create written works using various constraining techniques. So, think univocalism (only allowing yourself to use one of the vowels) and that kind of thing, often in cool Parisian coffee-houses- highly appropriate as the workshop took place in an independent cafe-gallery albiet in Southampton.

We worked though a variety of tasks and prompts, one of which was to create a snowball poem. This means starting with a single letter as the first line, two letters in line two and so on. You go as far as you want, then, if you wish, back down again to end with a single-letter as the last line. In a spirit of camaraderie, me and Ben did the exercises too. Here's my snowball output:


Snowball Earth

I
am
the
last
human
on this
fateful
dying orb,
sun-fusion
sucked away
to power – what?
Great engines,
gravitational
arrays that open
spacetime rips to
nowhere, a pure void
vampiric upon solar
energy, and we couldn’t
close it, so our giant
companion star got
cooler and cooler
‘til candle-faint,
a lonely cinder
lost in vacuum
without fuel,
so Earth now
chills and
darkens, a
funeral
for all
of our
kind
and
so
I…

Well, I got all dystopian and bleak there, but you see how it works... If you like constrained writing you can set yourself whatever rules you wish as long as you enter into the spirit of Oulipo and stick to them rigorously. A great book containing numerous examples is Adventures in Form, and you might like to check out Ross Sutherland's univocalist and N+ (more about that later) works, as well as the famous Eunoia by Christian Bok.'Til then, here's an image of poets attempting Oulipo-ness...

Palindromically yoursruoy

I do enjoy word-play and puzzling over forms and constraints, and decided to see if I could write something where each line is a palindrome - here it is...

Raw war

Onward madam, draw no
foe tirades, used a rite of
live rats, reviled – deliver star-evil
‘til DNA-trades reversed art and lit,
trade idyll, Atropos’ deed - sop or tally, died – art
is aloof, fool as I
reign – I’d won, now dingier,
sit palsied, sup on Opus Dei’s lap, ‘tis
no mead, daemon –
Doges oppose God,
murmur ‘rum, rum’
to help pirates set a ripple, hot
redness emits part, traps time’s sender
turret-fast, fire no-one rifts after rut,
dire drum sees murder I’d
gunsling, nixing, nil snug,
Sten fires serif-nets,
pan sideways as, yawed, I snap,
raw war.

WORdS, InNaRdS

A pair of medical/biological offerings in elementalist form i.e. made solely from the symbols of elements from the periodic table (because I do like tinkering with forms and constraints)


VErBaNAtOMoUS

AmYGdAlAs, PINeAl,
CePHAlISAtION OF
PrIMoRdIAl AmPHIBiC BRaIn,
OPTiCAl ORbS OF VISiON –
ReTiNa, SClErOTiC LaYEr,
BrOWS, LaSHeS,
NeAr NoSe, LiPS, CHIn,
SHoW UP As FAcEs.

In ThORaCIC SPaCeS,
ICKY OFFAl –
LiVEr (No ONiONS),
PaNCReAs GeNeRaTeS InSULiN,
ReNAl, HePaTiC, ILiAc,
SLiPPErY InTeSTiNeS,
BrONCHI, OEsOPHAgUS,
OVArIEs, TeSTeS (KNaCKErS).
FrAmEs OF OsSUArY SUCH As
TiBiO-FIBULaS = SHINbONeS,
CAlVEs UNdEr KNeEs,
VErTeBrAl STaCK,
CErVICAl, COCCYXeS, BAcKAcHe,
SCaPuLa, CLaVIClEs (PaIr),
CArPAlS, InSTePS, ArCHeS
CArTiLaGe, TeNdONS,
CIrCuLaTiON, NErVEs,
SKIn CoVErS GeNeTiC FOUNdAtIONS.

SiCKNESS

AcNe, NErVOUS TiCs,
FLu, BaRd’S AgUEs,
HErPEs SCaBS, SYPHILiTiC SOReS (YUCK),
BrONCHITiS, Tb,
PNEuMoCoNiOsIS
LuPuS (RaRe BeYONd ‘HoUSe’),
HIV, OThEr VIrUSEs,
CaNCEr (CHeMo, PRaYErS),
GeNeTiCs CaN Be UNKINd,
SErIOUS CoNdITiONS,
HoSPITaLiSAtION,
BiOPSiEs, SURgErY,
ReCoVErY?

A bit more elementalism

My second attempt at a form I've dubbed 'elementalism' for now - poems formed solely from the symbols of chemical elements.

BrITiSH CuISiNe

RuBBErY RaVIOLi,
RaINY BeAcH-CaFe,
PlaSTiC SeAtS,
TiNY SiNGe-BLaCK SAuSAgEs WITh SmAsH,
HP SauCe,
GeLaTiNoUS VINdAlOO,
LaRdY PIEs (ReHeAt) –
ThErE’s CaSH In CraP-InNA-tRaY,
CoRnErSHoP BOURbON,
HIPFLaSK,
ReHaB –
ReAl AlE’s NiCEr;
BY ONe A.m.
SNOW-WHITe BrITiSHErS
CHUNdEr CHIPS BY PuB,
UPCHUCK YUCK, CaUSe RuCKUS –
OthErS PReFEr
CrAcK-HoUSe WArEs,
CInNaMoN HAsHCaKEs
ChoCoLaTe MoNeY,
SmArTiEs.

Digital wampum

Inspired by some of the works in Offending Frequencies (Poetry Review 102:4 Winter 2012), especially the photographic responses by Yemisi Blake to new poems by Elmi Ali and Jo Brandon, I produced the following:

The hanging piece is entitled 'Digital wampum' and uses plastic components from VHS cassettes (a defining technology for someone who was a teenager in the 1980s) to depict key dates in my life, the black and white arrangement encoding them in binary. The words indicate the events these dates relate to.

Not necessarily respecting the normal

Normal activity

Parallel parking, 9-to-5, five days a week,
parakeeting advert science-bits,
(please do explain what Ceramide-R is)
paralytic Friday nights,
paraplegic by Sunday,
paragons of easy virtue,
parallax blurred by C2H5·OH,
parabolic bottle-lobbing,
parading with shagging shirts and handbagged heels,
paraben-product hair,
Paraquat down the drain,
paratha stuffed with vindaloo,
paraffin by the gallon,
paracetamol the morning afternoon.
¶
Parochial tastes prefer Cars and Planes to
Paranorman (too alt),
paraphrased as ‘a bit weird innit’,
paradise is never standing out, achieving
parity with the next-door Jones’ consumption
paradigm,
parachuting in the latest style of gravel,
paradox as misunderstood as
Paracelsus in this company,
paranoid about peering above the
parapet, not straying beyond accepted
parameters, a comforting
parasol for
parasites;
parody almost, but not quite, too easy
apparently.

A blog post writing I am

Written in response to a fellow poet's prompt to 'write a Yoda poem'...

yodadiary.blogspot.co.uk

Like a Jawa used it as a toilet
my mouth tastes this morning.
Ached my head did, not now
(Paracetamol, not Jedi mind trick).
Old Thumper I tried – liked it I did, yes,
karaoke night at the Star & Falcon it was, mmm;
“more, than this, much more, my way, I did it”
I sang,
“geroff, frog-face”, lads shouted –
green I am,
small I am,
Kermit I am not;
in the Serpentine
thinking they are ducks,
quacking
they are now
(Jedi mind trick) –
muppets.
OLL.