Summer Fun Poetry Class: Week Three

This week, we got to enjoy cut up pop songs and sparklers, and also find out just how few words "Call Me Maybe" has! And, my lovely wife wrote a zombie poem out of the lyrics to "Such Great Heights" which takes a certain amount of twistedness!

For a how-to on cut up pop songs, visit Radius.org: http://www.radiuslit.org/2011/03/11/invented-forms-the-cut-up-pop-song/

To join in the classes, go here: http://www.facebook.com/events/365909786810351/

Summer Fun Poetry Class: Week Two

Last night, we started out our class with coloring--this is my favorite page of Lynda Barry's What It Is, which I never shut up about recommending. I told everyone to put their coloring page somewhere where they need to be reminded to trust their creativity. Mine is right by my writing chair.

Then we all gave horoscope writing a whirl. Last year, Radius published my step-by-step of how to write a made up horoscope, you can find it here: http://www.radiuslit.org/2011/04/01/invented-forms-horoscope-poem/

I had a stack of books and Tarot cards out in case anyone needed a little extra inspiration, but my poet-pals were bubbling over with their own ideas--I was ready to steal them all for the Friday horoscopes. When Halloween comes around, remind me to use my wife's Zombie Apocalypse Horoscope--part of the reason I fell in love with her is that her writing is creepy as fuck sometimes.

Summer Fun Poetry Class: Week One

I'm a little bit behind in posting about my summer classes, (http://www.facebook.com/events/365909786810351/) but here we go! For week one, I decided to try Apples to Apples as a writing prompt, and guess what, it worked. How it worked was, for each round of Apples to Apples, we wrote a poem based on the words everyone had played. As with most of my workshops, we wrote until someone went "Ding!" at a random interval, then read them in a circle, generously lavishing each other with motivational stickers and butterfly stamps. This resulted in such wonders as a series of letters to J.J. Abrams and my wife' s current poetic obsession with the Zombie apocalypse.