Ariel Gordon's How-to Poetry

After our last class I felt particularly drawn to Ariel Gordon's work after Kevin pointed out that my poem "Life Hack #1" was reminiscent of her work. I also compiled and designed an anthology in class last year entitled "How to Poet," so I feel like my path was meant to cross over hers.

I found this article of hers insanely inspiring: http://49thshelf.com/Blog/2014/07/31/Behind-the-Poem-Ariel-Gordon-and-the-How-To-Poems

And this poem in the article really caught my attention, so much so that I may consider attempting another Life Hack poem. I've been googling "life hacks" for inspiration. That plus the following poem are definitely nudging me in the right direction.

How to Write a Poem

—Ariel Gordon 

Write about what terrifies you but, um, wait until mum or dad is dead to do it. For the family’s sake...

Take all the punctuation out of your poem

Your lover should be your first reader & your subject, but know this: having good sex is hard. Writing good sex is harder. Believing someone who just had their head between your legs—even if they’re a hardcore critic—impossible.

No one needs your next poem.

(Everyone needs your next goddamn poem.)

If writing rhyming poetry about God from jail, realize you’ve hit the trifecta. Celebrate by centering everything on the hard drive that’s not porn.

capital letters are for suckers. seersuckers. sapsuckers.

Also, use the page. Engage the ear. Allude to classical texts, sneak in a few impeccable pop culture references. Break the line. Break a leg.

Have a firm grasp of grammar & syntax but also have something on the side with the fragment. Form should follow content but, hopefully, not breathing heavily.

Put the punctuation back in.


Don’t write poems about writing poems.


What I particularly like about this poem is the randomness of it. The line "No on needs your next poem" made me laugh out loud. Sometimes, as a writer, I feel the urge to turn a good poem into a collection, but sometimes it falls flat and the work that follows it never lives up to my expectations, just like most movie sequels. Although that line seems ridiculous, I found some truth in it. The second line worth admiring is the final line. It's cheeky and cute and the perfect way to wrap up this poem.

Blue Skies vs Grey Fog

So, in response to a couple of questions about why I hate fog so much, I decided to write about it. I thought I could capture more of the emotion, but I feel like this first draft fell a little flat. I tried to bring a poetic meaning to my loathing of fog, but it kind of went in another direction. I'm going to play with this idea a little more, but in the meantime, here's my initial rough draft:

The Grey

Sometimes, an all too real
fogginess full of ponderings,
lack lustre memories, daydreams
of old habits and past friends
creep into the corners
of your unfocused mind
hovering somewhere between
yesterday and tomorrow, cold
and permanent, dull, leaking
life that once cracked your bones
and rattled your insides, held
your hand and carried you away

P.S. The real reason I hate fog is it acts like an unwanted hat on a sunny day. It'll be absolutely beautiful here at home, blue skies, melting snow, birds chirping, and then I head down Silver Star Rd into town and drive into a cloud of misery blanketing the town and blocking out any signs of happiness.

Rant over.

Google: Lindsey

So, last class Kevin challenged us to Google something (our names, for example) and then write a poem based on the images that turn up. I chose to Google my name, and wasn't entirely surprised by what I found. I was a little surprised at the lack of images of Lindsay Lohan, but I'm really glad about it too.

The majority of the pictures were blondes sitting around posing in bikinis. Don't they have anything better to do? I even found a couple of them sporting the dreaded "fish lip" look. Eww. There was one image that helped save my slightly shattered ego though: a Lindsey playing a violin! Hurray! Not all Lindsey's on Google appear to be flakey, bimbo bitches!

Here's the first draft of my Google image search results:

Google: Lindsey

Girl smiles with confidence

Girl hides behind thick lashes and black eyeliner

Blonde hair dominates society

Girl presses naked boobs to surfboard

Girl with pearl earrings grins

Girl with violin violently smirks

Skimpy bikini tops trump sweaters

Girl pouts, faking fat fish lips

While gripping a large microphone

Girls in red, girls in white

Big hoop earrings, gold and silver

Surprise! One man joins the crowd

Let me know your thoughts. I'm not too happy with how it turned out, but I think with some tweaking and adding and subtracting, this poem could be really interesting. I was also playing with the idea of moving it into a prose poem instead of a list poem.

2500 Random Things Review

The book 2500 Random Things About Me Too by Matias Viegener is such an interesting compilation. It's striking to me that this book simply originated on Facebook and then compiled to create an entire collection of poetry. It's such a neat idea, and in the age of flarf and other nouveau poetry movements, using Facebook to put together such a unique book isn't really all that surprising. The best part about Viegener's work is the subtle glimpse into the narrator's personality we're given as readers. At times, Viegener writes lines like "I bite my nails," but in other lines, he goes on to provide us with a memory or an event that took place in his past. Not only does he tell us about his personality and some of his characteristics, he also gives us something to think about and interpret in our own way. For example, the line: "I remember when I was a kid and the local teen pervert, who was maybe four years older than the rest of us, would lurk in a parking lot waiting to catch us," offers up a little insight into the narrator's thought process. Perhaps he felt paranoid or maybe he secretly hoped the teen pervert would catch him.

Overall, I found 2500 Random Things About Me Too a fun read. It almost felt like I was face creeping the narrator, reading his personal status updates, and even though the book contained no pictures, some of the imagery was vivid enough to create a picture in my mind's eye.  

For another thought-provoking review, check out Jacob Wren's review of the book on Lemon Hound.

25 Random Things About Me Too

I've been reading 2500 Random Things About Me Too by Matias Viegener, and thought it would be really neat to do something similar but on a smaller scale. It's a rough draft, but I like how it turned out. I'm totally open to feedback, so if there's something in this list that doesn't work, please let me know!

25 Random Things About Me You Probably Didn’t Know

1.  When I was a toddler, my brother and I were picked up for breaking and entering. We snuck into our neighbour’s trailer and ate cookies from their cookie jar.

2. I have two dogs and a cat. I used to have two cats but one was killed by coyotes on Christmas day 2013.

3. My middle name is Marlene, which is the same middle name as my grandma.

4. I feel like there’s a little alien in my uterus.

5. I had a childhood best friend until I moved to a new city at the end of Grade 7. We lost contact until I moved back to BC three years ago. She was my maid of honour at my wedding last summer.

6. I’ve been engaged twice, but only married once.

7. My favourite colour was purple as a little girl. Everything had to be purple.

8. My wedding colours were orange and blue.

9. Sometimes I think about how every place I’ve lived in has contributed to my personality, my likes, my dislikes, and the characteristics that make me who I am. Then I think it’s probably not the places I’ve been, but the people I’ve met.

10. I really dislike snow and cold weather, but not as much as I hate fog. It makes me really angry.

11. I like to renovate my house.

12. For my husband’s birthday, I renovated the garage. I even painted a large KTM logo on one of the walls.

13. We own three KTM dirt bikes.

14. Dirt biking terrifies me. I love it, but I get so nervous each time I gear up. My heart pounds louder than my two-stroke engine.

15. One time we were out dirt biking and I caught a branch in the neck. My first reaction was to drop my ear to my shoulder, which made me pinch the branch with my neck and cause a huge burn to my neck. Once it scabbed over, it looked like a giant hickey.

16. My grandpa nicknamed me Sweetpea on the day I was born. He still calls me that.

17. I honestly believe that if you think positively, good things will happen to you.

18. I have two brothers, a younger one and an older one.

19. My older brother was given up for adoption by my parents. My mom was 16 and couldn’t care for him. We met him six years ago, and now we’re all really close.

20. Not all endings are happy.

21. My prenatal vitamins make me really sick if I don’t take them with food.

22. My husband is a volunteer firefighter, and I’m so proud of him.

23. I used to have to wear snowsuits under my Halloween costumes when I was little. I looked like a fat princess.

24. My first car was a red ‘86 Ford Taurus. I filled the tank with kerosene once, and my dad cursed the entire time it took him to flush the fuel lines.

25. I’m so proud of the life my husband and I have built, and I can’t wait to bring our baby into it.

Writing Prompts

I've always found writing prompts to be insanely helpful to get my creative words out of my head; however, I sometimes have to go through A LOT of prompts. In fact, I'm signed up to Sarah Selecky's daily prompt email list. They usually hit my inbox around 3 am, cause my phone to vibrate, and either wake up myself or my husband. I've been a subscriber for about two years now, and I still haven't addressed the issue of the emails waking us up. Oops.

I thought I'd share a couple of my favourite recent prompts. They're mostly geared towards prose, but I've found them helpful in generating a poem or two.

Doody Draft

So... this weekend I stumbled across the perfect theme for testing out my flarfing abilities. We have a Roomba that miraculously vacuums up all the pet hair in our house before I get home from school and work. With two dogs and a cat, it's been a hero to my allergies. However, did you know it will push its way through some interesting piles? Enter dog poop. 

We have a puppy who is still learning that the house is a doo-doo free zone. As cute as she is, she can be a real pain in my house-cleaning backside.

So, while I scrubbed the floors (a lot of floors -- that Roomba really gives 'er) and my husband dismantled dear Roomba for the cleaning of it's life, I laughed out loud and realized I could probably write an entertaining flarf poem about this situation. 

Here's my doggy accident-inspired flarf poem (with about 90 percent of the lines taken right from Google):   

The doody of a pet owner

My Roomba tries to clean up dog poop
It does a crappy job
Solutions to the dog poop problem
from free wireless to a surprise package
The Dogs Trust says fouling is on the rise for the first time in ten years
It's one of the scourges of urban Britain.
Did you know it is an offence if you do not clean up your dog's mess? 
There are approximately 30,000 dogs in Tameside. 
Each day they produce nearly 12 tonnes of dog mess.
Unsightly, smelly, a breeding medium for germs and disease, and a huge hassle on the sole of a shoe, dog poop is not desirable
Curbing is the polite term for a canine waste disposal method 
Millions of dog owners collect their dog poo in small plastic bags
not scented -- try the green disposable kind!