I've been thinking about found poems recently. So many ideas are lying around, mislaid, ignored and soon to be lost for ever. A bunch of words came through my door yesterday, the Irish covid handbook, 'National Framework for living with COVID-19'.
Ah, a 'living with' handbook, how many of these could I have done with in my life? There's a huge gap in the 'living with' market now that 'living with' means 'living with 24 hours a day, almost', and 'living with little distraction from'. Maybe you have a 'living-with' poem you could write, you need to write, you are going to write because if you don't you might just do something crazy.
Another writing idea:
Open your Covid Handbook or the website online or whatever the guidance available to you in your current location.
Glance at it. Choose a word.
Repeat from different angles and perhaps from different distances, until you have twenty words.
Now write and your only task is to use all of the words. There is no need to make sense. There is no need to write in any style or shape. Take a word, play with it and when it rolls away or stops bouncing for you, grab the next one. Keep doing this until you have bounced all of the words around a little or a lot.
Put this piece of writing away. Relax, walk, sleep, eat or whatever it is you feel like doing. Next day look at the writing again. Underline anything that makes you smile or is interesting to you.
Now go make more wordy work.
A pluringual version of this would be to use the pamphlets or information from government websites in all the available languages to write your poem. It might be a way to learn some words in a new language or a way to play between languages you are already familiar with. Either way I hope you enjoy.
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