Poetry Workshop Project
June 25th, 2007Save as PDF
Last weekend I attended the Ocean State Writer’s Conference at the University of Rhode Island campus in Kingston. In a workshop led by the poet Ravi Shankar, we were asked to write “A Manipulated Fourteen Line Poem.” That project was so interesting that I thought I’d share it with you. If you’re game, you can try it yourself. You can even send your poem to TMP on the comments link. Here’s what you have to do, line by line.
Line 1: Write a line that has a smell in it.
Line 2: Make a one-line, end-stopped statement about a city (“end-stopped” means the line must end with a period, question mark or exclamation point.)
Line 3: Comment on the time of year, the season or the weather.
Line 4: Use an internal off-rhyme (i.e., a not-exact rhyme within a line).
Line 5: Use syntax in an unexpected way (i.e., invert or alter usual word order).
Line 6: Write a line with personification(s) and color(s) in it.
Line 7: Finish a sentence that begins with the words “Next year at this time”.
Line 8: Make an allusion to a book, movie or artwork.
Line 9: Be sure this line includes a metaphor and enjambs (i.e., a sentence in this line continues in the next line).
Line 10: Make this line a question.
Line 11: Alliterate at least three words.
Line 12: Make this line shorter or longer than the previous one by no less than five words.
Line 13: Write whatever you like.
Line 14: End on an image.
Now here’s the poem I came up with (remember, it was composed in about 15 minutes, so don’t be cruel).
Sand Castle
That rank low-tide reek –
It would stop traffic in Des Moines –
Induced instead a senseless summer ecstasy.
I stood again beside my massive castle
Built by me the ebbing waves before
As gray reluctant breakers fell in disarray.
Next year at this time I knew my work,
A great white whale of shoreline architecture,
Would like the pyramids themselves
Endure. Would the resentful sea pull down its mighty bulk?
I knew better. Defiantly my dungeon
Would outlive me
And baskers, bathers, surfers of generations unimagined
Would lost in admiration gaze upon its spires in the sun.
June 25th, 2007 at 9:39 am
Speedwriting yields a meditation on transience and immortality? Impressive and lovely.