Eavesdropping
This
is the thirteenth installment of The Curious Creative, weekly
10-minute writing exercises for busy individuals interested in exploring their
creativity. For the complete rationale, click here.
My Thoughts:
US
Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera does an activity with children where they
stand in a line and one-by-one write down words they hear around them. By the
end, they have produced a group poem (Isokawa). Let’s do something equally
simple for this week’s exercise.
Your Turn!
- Take yourself to a public place – a
coffee shop, a doctor’s waiting room, a store, a shared office, etc.
- Spend five minutes jotting down words
you hear. Don’t bother transcribing whole sentences; this is not a
dictation exercise. Just make a long list or a cluster of words you
overhear.
- After five minutes is up, see what you
have. You can do this next step in two ways. Either circle words which are
thematically similar to ensure your piece will be cohesive, or circle
words that simply stand out as interesting or fun, both in meaning and
sound.
- It’s a giant step to go from a list of
words to a poem, especially if like 99.8% of the population, you don’t
think of yourself as a poet. But I do encourage you for the next step to
“write your heart out” for five minutes, using the circled words as
jumping off points or links. You can write a poem by thinking about
sparseness and linebreaks, or you can write prose such as the beginning of
a short story (focus on setting and atmosphere).
How did you do? If you
tried a poem, is your piece hodge-podge and goofy like a MadLib or does it have
the potential to be a cohesive piece? If you tried prose, were you able to set
the scene? Most importantly, did you have fun?
5.
To encourage each other and grow a community of Curious Creatives, sign
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update whenever a new exercise is added. Thanks for playing!
Work Cited
Isokawa,
Dana. “Hayden Leads America’s Library.” Poets
& Writers, Jan/Feb 2017, pp.
21.
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