From glass slippers to chropodists – feet have many aspects and it is these that you should focus on. Spend five minutes brain storming feet!
Then spend ten minutes writing about them – once you start writing don’t worry about what you are writing just keep the words flowing. At the end read what you have written – this may well be the seed of a poem!
From granny’s teeth sitting in a glass on the bed side cabinet to sharp pointy teeth on a T-Rex to chattering teeth chasing themselves around in circles on stupidly large feet. Teeth are full of imagery, full of associations.
Dentists, teething, tooth fairies – the list goes on!
Spend five minutes expanding the list and then pick one toothy aspect and write about it for ten minutes. Just write what ever pops into your head, you can sort structure and things out later. Hopefully at the end of this exercise you should have the beginning of a poem!
Image copy write belongs to Sarah Snell-Pym
To see a bigger version of the image just click on it!
This is indeed a giant fondant fancy – do twenty minutes writing from the image and see what you get! You may need to break your diet after this exercise!
Pens, paper, rubbers in novelty shapes! A multitude of colours or a cupboard jelously guarded but the BOSS, be that in business or education. Stationary is a complex little world full of objects to do certain jobs.
Use the object or the existance of their world as an extended metaphor – are the pencils soilders and the rubbers artillary?
Now start writing!
Elephants – large creatures, tusks, big flappy ears, rumoured never to forget and to be scared of mice. But what do they mean to you? Do you have an eccentric aunt who collects them but believes the old superstitions and will never accept any elephant ornament as a gift? Or what about the saying “the Elephant in the Room”?
Spend ten minutes brain storming – take a sheet of paper and write ELEPHANT in the centre if you want you can enclose the word in a circle or cloud and yes different coloured pens are allowed!
Now write things you associate with elephants around it. You can circle these and attach them to the word elephant with a line. Some of the words maybe related to each other in which case you can connect those words with more lines.
Use the mind map to do ten minutes of writing from – you may find more of a formal structured poem arises from this sort of exercise!
Write down your very own top ten of music – look at the song titles – these are often poetic in themselves. Can you rearrange them to create the base of a poem?
If not then look through them – is there one that stands out as incredibly beautiful, horrific, racey? If so take the title and do fifteen minutes writing from it.
Use it to build imagery or concepts from – this could well produce a poem.
The word things can mean many… well… erm…. things: Objects, feelings, events. Take the tittle These Things think about it for five minutes then write for ten minutes from the title or a related idea that has struck you. Again just start writing make your pen or pencil or fingers keep moving – do not worry about structure, grammar or spelling! Those things can be added or sorted out later.
If you are lucky then you will have a first draft poem but more likely you will have a lot of dross with one or two good strong images in or phrases that you can use to build a poem around.
Just about everywhere you go on the planet there is grass!
Some is brown and wiry, some soft and springy, it maybe lush green and cool on hot feet, or spikey and cruel. And don’t forget we eat the stuff in the form of our cereals (rice, oats, barly). It’s roots can be a gardeners bain and some types have delicate wafty flowers.
Think on these things, think what is grass too you? Dinosaurs lived in a world bereft of the stuff and yet we have desert grass, we have swamp grass and of course we have lawns (often complete with ornimental gnomes!).
Now spend ten minutes writing about grass – just start writing don’t think too much about the process. Once your ten minutes is up look at what you got some of it maybe useful imagery for a poem – if you are lucky you may even have a first draft!
Dreams, if remembered, can be a rich source of material for writing, especially poetry. The imagery, ideas and concepts that can be thrown up by the sleeping sub-conscious are a gold mine!
However for most people dreams rapidly fade on awakening. Try keeping a dream diary – a note book you take to bed with you. When you awake in the morning before you do anything else (other than turn the alarm off!) jot down the dream regardless of whether it makes any sense. If you can not remember it is there a feeling, sensation or a lingering taste? Write these down instead.
After a week have a flick through the diary – a poem concept or sometimes even the beginnings of an actual poem may present itself to you.
If not carry on with the diary and try again the next week!
Image copy right belongs to Sarah Snell-Pym
To see a larger version click on the image.
Ice can make the world monochrome but in this image colour is stark but none the less there. Do twenty minutes’ writing from the image – see what you come up with!