Creative Writing Genres and Assignment

Creative Writing Genres for the Gloucester Project 2013

(On Friday June 14, 2013 you will pass in at least three poems adding up to at least seventy-five lines. I'm not very worried about these limits, but I want to make sure you produce substantial work. The poems will be proofread and typed, as well as imaginative, insightful, engaging, daring, vivid.)

Poetry

Go Inside a Photograph by Hoa Nguyen

“For this exercise, you will need a photograph. This can be a photo of yourself, family members, or strangers. I find it most generative if there is some temporal distance between yourself and the subject of the photograph i.e.: an archival or historical photo for which you have no direct memory.

Study your photo in detail. Imagine what is just beyond the borders of the frame. If it is in black and white, imagine it in color. Assign it smells, textures, sounds. Imagine that you can step inside the frame and walk around, experiencing that moment in time.

Now begin to write. Include as much sensory detail as possible; make up other detail, speculate. Be sure to pay attention to the rhythm and sound of your lines as you lay them down. If you get stuck, try repeating a word or phrase. Read your text out loud and strike out any awkward sounding lines. Arrange the lines on the page, give it a title and call it a poem.”

Spontaneous Poem based on an exercise by Rita Dove

To activate your subconscious mind, do the following:

·         Free write about your topic for five minutes. (This is stream of consciousness writing.)

·         Pick ten vivid, interesting, revealing words from your stream of consciousness free-write.

·         In five minutes write a ten-line poem in which each line contains at least one of the ten words and in which each of the ten words is used at least once.

·         Make a title using a phrase from your stream of consciousness free-write.

·         The point of this poem is to emphasize spontaneity, whimsy, seeming randomness, linguistic daring, absurdity, surreality, etc.

Metaphor Poem

·         Start with your topic. Brainstorm aspects of the topic (for example, Fitz Henry Lane=schooners, house atop Harbor Loop, oil paint, crutches, apple-peru, etc.) as well as feelings and concepts associated with the topic (for example, Fitz Henry Lane=luminism, beauty, realism, observation, etc.)

·         Then create metaphors for items in either list. (From the F.H. Lane list of concepts: Luminism is a painting with a light bulb inside. Or, a bit more vivid: The sky in the painting swallowed a light bulb. From the F.H. Lane list of objects: Crutches are legs Lane shed to sit and paint.

·         String the metaphors together. Edit them. Revise them. Expand them. Contract them. Use your ear, your mind’s eye, and your sense of the language of images to guide your revision.

Ekphrastic Poem

·         Choose an object or work of art (a photograph, statue, song, film, poem, story, painting, etc.) related to your topic.

·         Write a poem in which you respond to the work of art as if you were speaking directly to it, or as if you were an outsider (a newcomer, a tourist, a foreigner, an alien) seeing it for the first time without context, or as if you were inside the art, or as if you were the art/object.

·         In the title of the poem let the reader know what object or work of art you are responding to and from what perspective you are responding to it.

·         Many students like to write ekphrastic poems using a poetic form. (See below.)

Poem-based-on-another-Cape-Ann-poem Poem Write a poem in response to one of the poems in the Cape Ann poet packet. (In the poem, in the title, or in a note, let the reader know to what poem you are responding.)

Visual-Found poem using your research  

• Take sentences directly from your research and/or from anything you’ve already written for the Gloucester Project.
• Make the sentences into a poem by using a title, arrangement, line breaks, spacing, and font size and type. The purpose of this activity is to emphasize the visual aspect of poetry.
• Create a title.

Erasure poem using your research

• Take sentences directly from your research and/or from anything you’ve already written for the Gloucester Project.
• Make a poem by eliminating words in the sentences, by adding linebreaks, by adding spacing, and/or by playing with font size and type.
• Create a title.

Found vocabulary poem using your research

• Take a passage from your research
• Write a poem using only words from the passage.
• Don’t forget a title.

Traditional Form Poem (Italian sonnet, English sonnet, villanelle, sestina, tanka): Write a poem about your topic using a traditional poetry form*. (Forms are posted below.)

Combine any of the poetry exercises with a particular poet form. Or try the same prompt using different forms.
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Traditional* Forms of Poetry

Sestina

Length: 39 lines (six six-line stanzas with a final stanza of three lines)

Rhyme scheme: none

Rhythm: varied

Other: 123456, then the words ending the second stanza's lines appear in the order 615243, then 364125, then 532614, then 451362, and finally 246531. These six words then appear in the final tercet as well, with the tercet's first line usually containing 1 and 2, its second 3 and 4, and its third 5 and 6.

Italian Sonnet (in English)

Length: 14 lines

Rhyme scheme: ABBAABBA CDECDE

Meter (rhythm): iambic pentameter

Other: volta (shift) at line nine

English Sonnet

Length: 14 lines

Rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG

Rhythm: iambic pentameter

Other: volta at line nine, couplet provides closure or resolution or twist.

Ballad

Length: varies

Rhyme scheme: usually ABCB

Rhythm: four-beat line followed by three-beat line, etc. (Beat=stressed syllable)

Other: ballads tell a story

Villanelle

Length: nineteen lines

Rhyme scheme: ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA

Rhythm: usually tetrameter or pentameter

Other: The first and third line in the first stanza are repeated in several places. The first line is repeated at the end of the second and forth stanzas and in the third line of the last stanza. The third line is repeated at the end of the third and fifth stanzas and in the very last line of the poem. Here’s the scheme: A1bA2  abA1  abA2  abA1 abA2 abA1A2.

Limerick

Length: five lines

Rhyme scheme: AABBA

Rhythm:

anapestic (unstressed, unstressed, stressed syllables: da, da, DUM)

or amphibrachic (unstressed, stressed, unstressed syllables trimeter: da, DUM, da)

with three stressed syllables in lines 1, 2, and 5; and

two stressed syllables in lines 3 and 4.

Other: Limerick’s are usually playful, often absurd.

Haiku

Length: three lines

Rhyme scheme: none

Rhythm: five syllable, seven syllables, five syllables

Other: traditional haiku refer to the seasons directly or indirectly (kigo), and include a “cutting word,” a break in the text (kireji).

Tanka is a variation with the following syllable pattern: 5-7-5-7-7.

Renga is linked “tanka” 5-7-5, 7-7; 5-7-5, 7-7; etc.; finishing with an additional 7-7. 

Less Traditional Poetic forms that might help you create your own form

Acrostic variations: end-acrostic, double acrostic, mesostic

Anaphora (repetition of line or sentence beginnings), epistrophe (repetition of line or sentence endings)

Kerouac’s book of blues: one page poem

Olson’s projective verse (composition by field): treat the page like a musical score and/or artist’s canvas

Oulipo Experiments:

N+7: where each substantive or noun in a given text, such as a poem, is systematically replaced by the noun to be found seven places away in a chosen dictionary.

George Perec’s La Disparition (A Void in English): no words in the work include the letter “e”

Create-Your-Own-Form

·         Choose a form (tanka, haiku, acrostic, mesostic, double acrostic, sonnet, villanelle, limerick, sestina, etc.) and revise the rules so there are at least three constraints* (rules), or invent a form of your own with at least three constraints (rules).

·         Use the constraints to write a poem in response to your topic or some aspect of the topic.

·         In a note below the poem write down the three rules.

* Constraints can refer to rhythm and sound: rhyme scheme, alliteration, syllable count, stressed syllable count, etc. Constraints can refer to words and concepts: a particular word has to be in each line or stanza, a particular word cannot be used, a particular type of word (a color, a season, a name, etc.) must be used, etc. Other constraints: no words with the letter “e” or every line must have one word than the line previous or the words on the page must be arranged to look like the object being described.

Someone Else’s Form Write a poem using a form one of your classmates created.