Wednesday, March 11, 2015

word sieve

a useful tool I have discovered 
in managing worry/stress/anxiety 
is creating found poetry

when my thoughts are swirling I put them through a word sieve and see what comes out


I keep it simple (and small)
using cut up book covers as a foundation


I pretty it up with a painted border


and when I'm done
I have a little something to go on when someone says, "what do you think?"


it's not that I didn't know what I think,
it's that I didn't know how to say it

some interesting thoughts about found poetry:

“Happy poets who write found poetry go pawing through popular culture like sculptors on trash heaps. They hold and wave aloft usable artifacts and fragments: jingles and ad copy, menus and broadcasts — all objet trouvĂ©s, the literary equivalents of Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans and Duchamp’s bicycle. By entering a found text as a poem, the poet doubles its context. The original meaning remains intact, but now it swings between two poles. The poet adds, or at any rate increases, the element of delight. This is an urban, youthful, ironic, cruising kind of poetry. It serves up whole texts, or interrupted fragments of texts.” - Annie Dillard

"All writing is in fact cut ups. A collage of words read, heard, overhead. What else?" - William Burroughs

***
An Aside:

this duck walked right up to me in the park
he had such confidence
I had to wonder,
is it because he's tame?
or that he knows I am tame?



Saturday, March 7, 2015

a new tea

I'm trying a new tea today
and just had to take a picture 
(because she is so beautiful)


The Empresses' Garden
by Chai Diaries


had to drive to the mall yesterday
(the bane of my existence)
to pick up a replacement part for The Tall Guy's espresso machine
(turns out the shop sells tea too)

I Am The Queen

Thursday, March 5, 2015

just working

this week I'm making pocket poems
(repurposed book covers,  paint, book text)
last week I made crowns
this crown says "the queen of quite a lot actually"
sometimes I wonder

***

April is national poetry month
April 30th is pocket poetry day

***

the crowns are easily made with 36 gauge aluminum (or recycled pie tins)
my instructions for tooling the metal can be found in the sidebar under "metal-smithing"