Poem Portraits

I’ve always written poetry – sometimes a lot of it, sometimes just a line or two – but it’s always there, lurking just under my skin. And even though I haven’t been an active member in the local poetry scene over the last few years, I still keep tabs on it and enjoy taking part of the “poetry in the classroom” day at the high school.

What happen was, I went through a poetical dry spell. The part of my brain that created poetry was like a dustbowl with ideas trying to take root only to wither on the vine for lack of nourishment. I wasn’t even reading poetry, never mind writing it.

However, at the beginning of the year I started getting my poetry mojo back. While I haven’t got back to my exploration of set forms (one of my passions), I have written a few poems – not just jotting down random lines, but actual poems. I even went so far as to go to one of the local poetry readings where I met up with some of my poetry friends.

I had so much fun at the reading that I went to the meeting of my old poetry group, where I had even more fun. I even did the “poem work,” which was to write a poem with the word poem or poetry in the title. I wrote an “Ode to Poetry” where I named 70 different poetry forms. And just so you know, that’s not nearly all the forms that are out there.

While I’m not ready to dive into doing a poetry thing on a regular basis here, you might see the odd poem or two peeking out. You know, once in a while. As the mood strikes me.

In the meantime, I’d like to share this link that showed up on my Facebook feed from one of my poetry friends. It’s called Poem Portraits, the brainchild of Es Devlin. It’s an online experiment combining artificial intelligence and human intelligence to create a collective poem. To participate, you go to the website and add a word. Simple as that. Then you have the option of allowing the site access to your camera so it can create your “Word Portrait.”

The word (one of many, I might add) I chose was magical. I never use the camera on my lap top so the program couldn’t access it, so the picture at the top of this post is what you get without access. But then I had the bright idea of accessing the site with my phone. Using the same word I got the picture below as the result (and yes, I know, I take terrible selfies!).

I don’t know why my phone turned the picture blue for the selfie. A couple of other tries I made (that were even worse that this one) were yellow and pink . . . Maybe the camera in my phone was just getting tired. LOL

If you want to give it a try, the website is HERE . Go ahead, give it a shot. All it takes is one word.


Prompts of the Week

Prompt One
You have discovered what appears to be an ordinary room. But as soon as you enter the room, time stops for you. When you leave the room, time picks up right where you left off. What do you use this room for?

Prompt Two
Write a story that begins with the title of the book you’ve most recently read and ends with the name of your favourite character that you’ve written.

You don’t need to spend a lot of time on these, they’re just meant for fun. Take 5 minutes to think about it, then write for 10 or 15 minutes. And if it turns out you like what you’ve written, then by all means turn your exercise into an actual story. You can find these prompts, and others like them, at Writer's Digest .