Wednesday, July 3, 2013
It appears that you have found "This is My Poet Hand;" a blog that was active from 2009 - 2011.
Good job! But we don't use it anymore. Sorry.
But. But where's the WU-SLam blog? Surely, WU-SLam has a blog. Why can't I find it? Why doesn't this premier slam poetry community have a blog??!!
Hey, hey, hey. Shh. Shhhhh. It's okay. Calm down. Listen.
Do you hear that rumble?
It's the sound of us moving to Tumblr.
Did you click the link?
Click it already.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
We started out making lists of songs--preferably songs with lyrics.
- List 5 songs you've heard in the last week, voluntarily or otherwise.
- List 5 songs that are familiar to you. Think about songs your parents played to you, or songs that had an impact on you when you were young.
- List 5 songs that annoy you or bother you.
Next, listen to The Mrs. Gets Her Ass Kicked by Tracie Morris, which you can find here. I nabbed this poem from a CUPSI lecture on sound in poetry. Thank you, thank you, CUPSI speaker!
We had a really great discussion about the piece. There's a lot of unusual stuff going on here, including the fact that Tracie Morris didn't actually write any words to make this poem. She borrows an existing song and pulls it apart, playing off its original context to talk about domestic violence. The extent to which the poem relies on performance kind of blew my mind. It would be a really difficult thing to put on the page, right? I think as slam poets, most of us work by writing all the poem's text and then constructing a performance around the words. It's easy to forget that performance can have meaning on its own.
At this point, we wrote on one of two prompts:
Write a poem using only lyrics from a song (or songs) on your list.The crew came up with a wide range of collage-y song mashups and poems interspersed with sound effects. The consensus seems to be that Inklings isn't long enough to make something like that work, but I think it gave everyone something to think about.
OR write a poem that incorporates the sounds you brainstormed earlier.
OR some combination of the two.
Enjoy the rest of your National Poetry Writing Month!
> MP3 of The Mrs. Gets Her Ass Kicked by Tracie Morris
> More work by Tracie Morris on PennSound
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
2 places you’ve been within the past month
2 people you’ve met within past 5 years
2 objects that you’ve lost in the past year
2 emotions you’ve felt in the past 2 weeks
2 childhood memories from… childhood
Write a poem in which you compare any of these 10 objects, no minimum or maximum.
Write a poem using 5 of the 8 words of the following words:
5. (Your name)
BY KIM ADDONIZIO
Today the cloud shapes are terrifying,
and I keep expecting some enormous
black-and-white B-movie Cyclops
to appear at the edge of the horizon,
to come striding over the ocean
and drag me from my kitchen
to the deep cave that flickered
into my young brain one Saturday
at the Baronet Theater where I sat helpless
between my older brothers, pumped up
on candy and horror—that cave,
the litter of human bones
gnawed on and flung toward the entrance,
I can smell their stench as clearly
as the bacon fat from breakfast. This
is how it feels to lose it—
not sanity, I mean, but whatever it is
that helps you get up in the morning
and actually leave the house
on those days when it seems like death
in his brown uniform
is cruising his panel truck
of packages through your neighborhood.
I think of a friend’s voice
on her answering machine—
Hi, I’m not here—
the morning of her funeral,
the calls filling up the tape
and the mail still arriving,
and I feel as afraid as I was
after all those vampire movies
when I’d come home and lie awake
all night, rigid in my bed,
unable to get up
even to pee because the undead
were waiting underneath it;
if I so much as stuck a bare
foot out there in the unprotected air
they’d grab me by the ankle and pull me
under. And my parents said there was
nothing there, when I was older
I would know better, and now
they’re dead, and I’m older,
and I know better.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
First, you need to listen to Feeling This by blink 182. In addition to be being a great song, it also serves two purposes today's prompt
Listen to the lyrics and try to pick up some of the idioms.
Now that you have a sense for some idiomatic expressions, you should free write for 20-40 minutes, depending on how much time you have to spare. Here's the list of idioms I used
Bite off more than you can chew
Clean up your act
To each his/her own
Fighting a losing battle
Bread and butter
A bubble burst
Change of heart
Turn back the clock
Wouldn’t be caught dead
By the skin of one’s teeth
Pay the piper
Price of Progress
Under the weather
When hell freezes over
A New York Minute
Take by storm
(Wo)Man Of his(/her) word
Jack of All Trades
Feel free to use any of those or something you come up with, but make sure you're writing about the same thing with your friend.
A story: During the creative process for their new album, the two front men for blink 182 went into separate rooms and wrote for about an hour. When they came out and shared the work, they realized they wrote about sex: One about the physical and lustful side and the other about the emotional and tender side. They decided to the put the two together and thus a hit was born.
Now, you and friend should sit down and try to mix match the pieces you have and see if you can't come up with a cool piece.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Anyway Happy Valentines Day! This prompt has two parts: the first focusing on the stereotypical abstract language of holidays/love and the second focusing on the history behind Valentine's Day in particular and the concept of traditional basis for holidays.
Unfortunately you wont be able to close your eyes as originally intended during Inklings:
Write the first concrete image that you see in your mind's eye when you read these abstract words.
Wasn't that stimulating? You can stop now if you want and write about one of these abstract words using your concrete image and other related concrete language.
Now Valentine's Day isn't just for making October babies. It's generally about a Christian marrying couples during a time it was made illegal for completely rational and in no way ridiculous reasons. Long story short, he is executed. We forever rue this day and attempt to absolve ourselves by offering one another chocolates, flowers, and our genitalia.
The story I brought to Inklings can be found online anywhere by searching "Valentine's Day Legend Blind Girl" in google, or some other fancy search engine if you're a rebel. I won't copy the text into this post since it is exceedingly long.
After reading the story, reflect on the overall concept of how Valentine's Day nowadays doesn't give a shit about what happened to St. Valentine. Now take that anger that I'm sure you have now and channel it into this: write your own legend behind a real or madeup holiday and focus on how this psuedotradition has been lost amongst modern revelry.
Or write about flowers and chocolates. That's cool too.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Whether you realized it or not, WU-SLam's Grand Slam is coming up this Friday at 8:00pm in Edison Theater, featuring the incredible Mr. George Watsky.
What? You don't know what slam is? Well, dear friends, I can enlighten you. Merely follow this link and be amazed.
Get excited or Naia will hunt you down.
Friday, December 31, 2010
But first, a rap by our December feature, Nate Marshall of Vanderbilt.
Listen to some dope poems and get psyched! For January 28th and the Grand Slam approaches.
>> 2010 December Slam playlist