OULIPOSTER FADES OUT OR RATHER, JUMPS

I was full of good intentions while away on holiday, but the flesh was weak. Now, with only two days to go to the end of the month, I've lost my momentum. It was an interesting experience to be an Ouliposter, and I'll certainly be using some of the ideas to produce poems in the future. I also want to go back and read other Found poets' work. I didn't want to be over-influenced at the time, but I have a lot to learn from others , who've kept to the rules, and who've produced clever work. Thank you Oulipost for giving me the opportunity.

OULIPOST#17 HAIKUISATION: SKOKHOLM SEXISM

'The Haiku is a Japanese poetic form whose most obvious feature is the division of its 17 syllables into lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Haikuisation has sometimes been used by Oulipians to indicate the reduction of verses of normal length to lines of haiku-like brevity. Select three sentences from a single newspaper article and “haiku” them.'

What I did  for yesterday's prompt, 'Cyfri'r Geifr' (Counting the Goats) was a haikuisation.  The haiku below was the result of combining two articles, one on Skokholm, an Island off the west coast of Pembrokeshire and the other about sexism in the UK.(references quoted yesterday) 

I am now away for ten days over Easter without internet access. So, although I will try and respond to some prompts, I won't be able to post them til the end of April.

SKOKHOLM SEXISM

Volunteers like choughs

grope and stroke on burning nights

trudging, complaining.

OULIPOST# 16: CHIMERA: CYFRI' R GEIFR*

Wednesday April 16 prompt is
'The chimera of Homeric legend – lion’s head, goat’s body, treacherous serpent’s tail – has a less forbidding Oulipian counterpart. It is engendered as follows. Having chosen a newspaper article or other text for treatment, remove its nouns, verbs and adjectives. Replace the nouns with those taken in order from a different work, the verbs with those from a second work, the adjectives with those from a third.'

What I'm learning from being an Ouliposter without much time,  is that if it doesn't work in the hour I have, then try and make it something else or abandon it for now. I can always come back to it. For me this month is more about learning new ways to write poetry than the finished outcome.
      Today, I used four sources: an article in the Guardian newspaper,'China cancels human rights dialogue with Britain over 'interference'';Good Housekeeping,May 2014, 'Stamp Out Sexism'; Natural World, Spring 2014, 'Skokholm Diary', and the Western Mail, April 12, 'Two singers, one voice.' 
      It just wouldn't work, so I decided to write a Haiku, and have come up with two- one to use for tomorrow's Haikuisation.

Cerys Matthews makes music

Eight stuck in a lift

Counting the Goats, a Welsh song

Nowt so dear as folk.

* 'Cyfri'r Geifr', a Welsh song title,'Counting the Goats,' Sung in rounds increasingly quickly. Breaks the ice and gets you tongue-tied.  

OULIPOST# 14 : COLUMN INCHES: 'HEARING EXPEDITION'

I've spent the last two days on a creative writing for well-being course in Bristol run by the Orchard Foundation, so have missed a couple of days prompts. In today's the instruction is:-
'Refer to the advertising section or the classifieds in your source newspaper. Create a poem by replacing all of the nouns in your chosen segment with nouns from one article in the same newspaper. You may use multiple ads/classifieds, presented in the order of your choosing.'

I used the Telegraph magazine of 12 April 2014, an ad on hearing aids with an article by Charlie Norton and Giulio di Sturco of The British Exploring Society, called Expanding Horizons.

As I'm working in an hour I had very little time to produce this, and it shows.

HEARING EXPEDITION

STOP!
Hearing place?
Make sure you get the right geology.

Should you go NHS or Private for your hearing frontier?

This essential free expedition will help you choose the right landscape.
Lava included with:-
What you need to qualify
What you have to do to obtain an NHS digital hearing rock
What type of rock and what mountain scree you can expect,
and
snow on what hearing mood might be suitable.
Also, the valleys and sheep of going private.


Janet Daniel, 14 April 2014

OULIPOST 11: UNIVOCALISM: OVER THE PILL

Today, I was on the train to Bristol, where I was attending the second level of a course on writing for well-being. I saw yesterday's newspaper on the seat, one I would n't normally read, The Daily Mail, Friday 11, 2014), and decided to give the following article a univocalist treatment with the vowel E.
 'RAF hero, 83, arrested and locked up for seven hours-for taking painkillers to his wife in a care home.'
If it wasn't for the antics of a hen party, dressed in pink cowboy hats, blowing whistles to see who could take their big knickers off first, I may have got something better.. .Yeah, as if.

'A univocalic text is one written with a single vowel. It is consequently a lipogra in all the other vowels. If he had been univocally minded, Hamlet might have exclaimed,
'Be? Never be?. Perplexed quest: seek the secret!'  All words used must be sourced from your newspaper.'

OVER THE PILL

 

He's been left there,

elderly.

Best cell; Seven.

Held.

Never been

there,

never been left.

Elderly,

spent.

 

 

 

OULIPOST 10 SNOWBALL: AMBUSH

I'm on a roll. . .

'This procedure requires the first word of a text to have only one letter, the second two, the third three, and so on as far as resourcefulness and inspiration allow. The first word of a snowball is normally a vowel: in English, a I or O.

From your newspaper, select a starting vowel and then continue adding words of increasing length from the same source article or passage. Challenge yourself further by only using words in order as you encounter them in the text.'

AMBUSH

A hollow-tipped wail

tormented fingers

in a blood-strewn court-room;

‘Have a look! Have a look!’

On Valentine’s Day

an intruder.

Milliseconds of melon memories,

a firearm discharged.

Shot, killed, shock body-horror.

‘Have a look! Have a look!’

Protestations and responsibility.

Accident or murder?

The trial continues.

 

Janet Daniel

From: The I, April 11, 2014. Tom Pack. Prosecutor orders Pistorius to look at picture of Reeva’s body.

OULIPOST 9 HEADLINES

 

Wednesday’s prompt was: ‘Compose a poem whose body is sourced from article headlines in your newspaper.’ Mine is taken from the front page of the  I, Thursday 10 April 2014. ( I know, I'm behind). It would be quite fun to make a soup of these words and pull them out at random to see what happens. But I think I’ll just go on to yesterday’s prompt.

‘Culture secretary resigns after scandal over expenses. Tory Party vice-chairman fired for tweeting: ‘About time.’ No mothers in the cabinet for first time in 22 years. New women’s minister opposes gay marriage. Student debt in your 50s for 75% of today’s undergrads. Ukraine: 48-hours to get out-ultimatum to separatists. Why the MoD wants to censor my Helmand book. End of the Road for Red Devils after exit from Europe.  Secrets of the Mummies. The drugs scandal of the century.’

Janet Daniel, April 11, 2014.