{"id":1949,"date":"2015-05-09T14:17:31","date_gmt":"2015-05-09T04:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1949"},"modified":"2015-05-09T14:36:35","modified_gmt":"2015-05-09T04:36:35","slug":"the-third-lesson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=1949","title":{"rendered":"The third lesson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boo and I have been ambling our way through the How Writers Write Poetry<\/a> online MOOC. The course is presented by Christopher Merrill and Camille Rankine, via the University of Iowa.<\/p>\n

This week’s lesson was on ‘the line and the page’ and the assignments were to write a prose poem<\/strong>, and to write a poem that uses the whole page<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Boo wrote a prose poem without a title, though she says you can call it Mum’s place if you are really wanting a title. She says it feels unfinished. And that she is disdaining commas and question marks.<\/p>\n

I don’t miss the morning cold. Or the way the wind is always blowing in my hair. People feed the birds here. Day old white bread strewn across public lawns and private parks. Did you ever notice the way Mum never stops at roundabouts. Or the way your little sister talks. Like she’s an extra in a music video. When she grabs your hand to dance she is suddenly eighteen and hitting the clubs with her girls. Did you notice the way it makes you feel. The daggy older sister who wears her hair short and worries too much. Did you notice the stale acidic scent of cat and cigarettes. That is distinctly Mum’s place. The way you can miss people even when you’re with them. The way that visiting home can take you back. A decade. You see. Not how this place has changed. But you. Did you ever notice the way Mum’s place is like a time capsule. Yet to be sealed. Never buried.<\/p>\n

And I wrote a poem\u00a0that uses a whole page. It’s called ‘pick & choose’.<\/p>\n

\"Pick<\/a>
Pick a piece of punctuation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Pick a bird<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Choose\u00a0another bird<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


\n<\/a>\"pick\"<\/a>There are eight ‘fortunes’ inside the paper fortune teller, intended to be discovered in random order, but here they are:<\/p>\n

1.
\nyour love is a
\nsmug egg<\/p>\n

2.
\na bird’s fine beak will peck
\nat your sorrow
\nand loss<\/p>\n

3.
\nyou will know
\nthe invisible architecture
\nof the sky<\/p>\n

4.
\nyour love will eat seeds
\nand fly
\naway<\/p>\n

5.
\nyou will fall
\ninto the air<\/p>\n

6.
\na bird will make
\na nest in your beard<\/p>\n

7.
\nKing of Wrens, you
\nwill be hunted<\/p>\n

8.
\nyour love will smell
\nlike camphor laurels
\nand lemonade<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boo and I have been ambling our way through the How Writers Write Poetry online MOOC. The course is presented by Christopher Merrill and Camille Rankine, via the University of Iowa. This week’s lesson was on ‘the line and the page’ and the assignments were to write a prose poem, and to write a poem…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[653,342,167,288],"tags":[1131,1130,1133,1129,972,1132],"class_list":["post-1949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-and-other-research","category-on-teaching","category-on-writing","category-short-works","tag-camille-rankine","tag-christopher-merrill","tag-fortune-teller","tag-how-writers-write-poetry","tag-rebecca-jessen","tag-university-of-iowa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LH1G-vr","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/three.jpg?fit=3264%2C2448","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1949"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1962,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1949\/revisions\/1962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}