Slice of Life March Challenge. No. 29.
I stopped by Kim K’s Blog postΒ today and enjoyed her poem created from the titles of her March slices.
Why not? I thought. And so, I crafted the titles of 28 slices into a poem. It was fun, and IΒ must say I was doubtful at first but then pleasantly surprised with the whimsical nonsense that I discovered.
Titles
It has been like a tale
of four shirts–
When we gained three,
and lost one
on the journey home–
When without words
we were writing
through the block
putting pen to paper
crafting blessings
and limericks–
When we cried in
the passing moment
as the earth moved
While we sipped coffee
and ate blueberry pie
at La Molienda
in Portoviejo
just south of the Equator
where the sea is calling me–
And my friend
joined our party
celebrating
with little sand crabs
who were storing eggs
in running water–
There we ate greenfrost
made from recipes
from the 19th century–
There we were thankful
that we could embrace
with great love
and much forgiveness
even though I failed,
or did I?
Writing about my writing
From my blog posts, I copied the titles onto sticky notes, keeping the titles in order in a list. That was not significant in any of the writing, it was just a way of making sure I didn’t miss one. I thought about cutting the sticky notes into strips but my writing was spaced evenly. So I opened Word on my Mac and created a single column table. I typed a title on each row. I didn’t worry about capitalization — some are capitalized, some aren’t.
I printed the document and cut the titles into strips. Here are the strips along with my original sticky note version.
I sorted the title strips, hunting for connections,Β looking for lines that might follow each other, single word titles that could be clustered together. I was just hoping something would jump out at me. Nothing did.
Then I decided to try to put clusters together–two, three, or at the most four titles, each a line, like a stanza.
At that point I began to type the clusters into Notes on my Mac.
Slowly connections began to emerge, I played some more with the title strips on the table, and then I typed in a continuous flow of lines adding as few words as possible, keeping the titles unchanged within the lines, sometimes divided. I felt a poem forming.
Draft 1:
I read it several times, playing with the imagery.Β I decided where lines should break and how I would use em dashes to indicate that a thought created by a continuous flow of lines had ended and capitalization at the beginning of the next line to emphasize a new idea. I put the caps in bold to give more emphasis.
I then worked on the beginning and the ending, moving two lines from the beginning to the end. I liked the effect created by leaving the reader with a question at the end (compare draft 1 above with my final poem at the top).Β I tried creating stanzas but felt all the lines needed to stay close to each other.
Here is a galley of the final draft with the slice titles — all of them from March 1st to March 28th — highlighted in color.
There was one thing that I hadn’t anticipated: I consciously had to work at not associating the words in the titles with the meaning they had in the original slice. I had to free them so I could use them with other meanings, in other context.
Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for hosting
2017 Slice of Life Story Challenge
This is so fabulous!!! I love that you wrote about your process….right before I got to that part I was thinking that I would love to do it, but couldn’t imagine how to get started. And then there were your steps! I just may try this one.
Wow, what a post! I would have been impressed by the poem alone but the process part is such a treasure for writers and writing teachers. I might try this on one of our final days (and definitely bookmarking for next year’s challenge!)
I love the way you walked us through your thoughtful process – my sixth graders slice all year (once a week), and this would be a marvelous end of the year project to do with them. Thanks for sharing!
I love the breakdown of your process. Your poem turned out beautiful. I’m always intrigued by people’s titles.
Ah, thanks, Kim! I’m so glad you stopped by.
Cool idea. Thank you for documenting your process so we could see how the titles evolved.
So glad you came by, Adrienne! π
You did so much creative work in this, Alice. Wow! I enjoyed your point about freeing the words from the thoughts in the original post. That would have to be necessary to create new meaning. Thanks for taking the time to show ALL the process!
That part was such an ahaa for me. If you try it, Linda, please feel free to come back and post a link to your work in a reply here.
What a great way to showcase a month of writing. I am so glad that you shared your process. It is interesting to see how the meaning changes as the context does.
Yes… it is all about the meaning!
This is so amazing — I have been reading and rereading your poem and process. I don’t think I could ever do it– It is truly so creative. I think this is a great idea for kids – I can totally see some of their creative minds loving this. The poem is beautiful — thank you so much for sharing this idea.
Clare
So glad you came by, Clare. It would be great with kids. With younger ones, I would limit the number of titles they could select out of a list… I think. π
” I consciously had to work at not associating the words in the titles with the meaning they had in the original slice.” I think you nailed why it is so hard for students (any writer) to reread their work with objectivity -the original meaning floods our consciousness and obscures new possibilities. This is such a cool post and a great idea for creativity. LOVE IT!
Thanks, Paula. That part you quoted was my biggest take away from the activity. Thanks for coming by.
Wow! Wow! Wow! I love this idea! Thank you for sharing your process too. I found that very helpful!
So glad you came by, Michelle, and thanks for letting me know! π
Lovely poem best of all — you shared your process.
Perhaps some of us should do the same with other people’s blog posts, not just our own. Wouldn’t that be interesting …
Kevin
That’s a great idea, Kevin! Let me know if you do it! In fact, if you do, come back and post a link to it in the reply here. I’m working on something similar. Not sure if it will turn out so I will say no more. Thanks for coming by.
Great job with this sorting and creating task, Alice. A poem evolved from 28 slices. Now that is impressive. If you check out my post, I mentioned your name as being one of the Winter Wonder Gallery writers.
Ah, thanks, Carol. I will have to run over there and take a peek! You are so sweet. You can reply to this and post your link to it here. Hugs.
this is very cool! I’m glad you broke down how it worked – I was wondering after I read the poem, where the titles came from and how the poem got put together π thanks for the picture breakdowns as well.
You are so welcome, HannanaBanana. BTW, I find myself smiling when I see your “name” … I love hinky pinky names.
Ha I’m glad! My friend used to call me that when I was younger
I like how you felt you had to free them from their original context. It provides layers of meaning you can’t even comprehend on your own when you can do that. I love to find/create new meaning. Thank you for breaking down your creative process.
I like that “layers of meaning,” Laura.
I wrote about your post in my post
Thank you so much. That is so sweet of you to do. And I left you a comment there (BTW, the link has an error; in the https:// it shouldn’t have the letter s; just http:// .) Hugs to you!