Categories: uncategorized
Date: 09 June 2010 14:13:22
The poet Sylvia Plath used this technique with her creative writing students. She asked them to write creatively about things that are mundane and everyday. The idea is that if you can be creative when writing about a toilet roll or about a mushroom, it will help you to expand your thinking on other issues, whether for creative prose like stories, or for poems. Description is obviously important with language. Pictures can show the detail. With language you have to say that the wall was covered in a green carpet of moss, or that the sunshine sparkled on the sea like someone had thrown a bucketful of diamonds over it. You have to set the scene completely. Here's a couple of my attempts!
Litter Bins
Black, blue, red
Searingly hot: plastic will burn you if you touch.
Its tummy so full
Its still wide, yawning, gaping mouth beginning to overflow
Contents; bottles, wrappers, chip papers, sandwiches
Things bought and unfinished
Bought and then unwanted
Symptomatic of a throwaway society
But better in the dark jaws, than lying
On the ground, being trodden on, slipped on
Or providing an attraction for hungry gulls to keep returning
Going snap snap with their beaks at passers by.
Paving Slab
Square, exact
Perfect edges
Beige and Gray
Tiny spots
Rough texture caused by dirt from the path
You can hear it when my shoes
Move around
The definite, measured sides
The cement in between is what is
Cracked and fragmented.
Chaos surrounding sense