top of page
Writer's pictureCaleb Parkin

NaPoWriMo 2.8: Position 7

“The vase is filled with another thousand of these moments.”


Today, I’ve co-written (with my partner Paul Hurley) the second poem of the day, using a technique based on the work of Paul Matthews using questions (the elemental sentence related to Water and communication) and sentences (relating to noun, object and Earth). I’d been ‘gifted’ the name of an artist – photographer, Isabelle Wenzel – on Facebook, to post up a picture by…

So we made an ekphrastic call-and-response poem, using one of Wenzel’s pictures as stimulus. The idea is that one of you writes 4 questions while the other – without seeing – writes 4 statements, then you do the same but writing the other type of sentence. So you have eight of both.

After that, you read them out and listen out for interesting mismatches, dissonances and combinations.

Then you have a tinker and see what comes out – as follows. Sometimes it works better than others, but as a response to a picture it’s quite a fun (and fast) way of creating some writing…

Position 7

(after Isabelle Wenzel)

What time is it?

The vase is filled with another thousand of these moments.

From where did she get that vase?

It is often seen here, baying in the corner of this café.

Is that one piece of fabric?

That floor is a psychedelic million checker-board war zone.

What is her name?

Tangerines all begin this way.

When it is done, what will be left?

It is a painting.

What is the angle of its knees, the degree of curvature in the spine?

There is tension and balance.

Is it staying, laying, roosting, or is it passing through?

The toe nails are painted on the shoes.

If the formatting doesn’t work, then here’s a PDF of the poem…

5 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page