Name: Writing ♥ Poetry Writing Exercise & Workshop Review {with captions!}
Uploaded: 2014-01-18T21:27:14.000Z
Duration: 12 min 31 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Past simple

Hey guys! I'm just getting home from a poetry workshop that I took in Delray. It was at

the Murder on the Beach Mystery bookstore. It is an amazing bookstore, small and locally-owned,

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and they have a great series called the authors academy, which are writing workshops taught

by different authors. Some of them are Florida authors. and they cover a wide range of topics

from memoirs to children's books, general fiction and now poetry. I hadn't been to a

poetry workshop in quite a long time, so I was really looking forward to this one. I

really love writing poetry when I sort of need a break from writing my book, which I'm

working on slowly but surely. So I really love poetry as a vacation from a huge story

that I'm writing.I really enjoyed the workshop. The teacher, Judy Ireland, is an amazing poet

- you should check her out, and I will put some links in the description box below so

you guys can check out some of her poetry, because it really is good. I think you'll

really like it. I think she's very talented. SO what I really wanted to get into was an

exercise for poetry writing, and this was the exercise that we did today. And I will

give you one piece of advice that Judy Ireland said that really stuck with me, and that's

that it is as much about what we leave out of poetry as what we put in. So, you can really

say less and the reader will fill in the emotion, and that lets them connect to the poetry more

completely for them, rather than putting in something that's so specific that they might

not be able to identify with it. So the exercise is we're going to write down a few things

from our day or past few days, and there will be 11 things and we're going to write them

down. And you can take about 30 seconds to a minute for each thing and, really try to

do it off the top of your head, as quickly as possible, so that it's as organic as it

possibly can be. So it's not anything you have to think too hard about. Because the

idea is sort of just that when you think of things your brain is already making connections

that you don't realize. Once we're done with that we're going to put it together, sort

of piece by piece, like a puzzle, and make a poem out of it. And then you can revise

it if you want or if you like how it turned out, you can keep it that way. I think it's

really fun, so let's get started. Now, the first thing you're going to want to do is

take out a pen and paper and write the following things down. The first thing is: write 5 objects

that you see every day and the order in which you see them. So, I wrote "black cat, glasses,

window, trees, pool". And that was just me, I'm not going to repeat all of my answers

for all that, but you do it now, pause the video if you need to, but don't pause it too

long and don't think too hard. Now we'll do number 2: For number 2, write down three non-primary

colors, like shades, so for example cerulean is a shade of blue, so don't write red yellow

or blue, but you can write down any other color, like lavender or periwinkle, do what

you want, do some colors that you're feeling right now. the 3rd is you're going to write

down an object that you have encountered in a dream, either recently or ever. The 4th

is an experience you had as a child that made you angry at the time or now, whichever. The

5th: write down a forbidden thought pertaining to love. Number 6: write down 3 questions

for which you've never found an answer.  Number 7: write something about love that you find boring

Number 8: write down 3 slant rhymes - so, two words where the consonants are similar

so you kind of have a a similar sound on your tongue. The example the author gave was "moon mine".

I wrote down "purple petal" or "jangle jewel" and another one that is included in

my poem, so I'm not going to say it just yet. but you can really do whatever. I'm not sure

how good mine are in the scheme of things, but I like them. Number 9: write 3 things

that people said to you in the last 48 hours - little short phrases. Number 10, write 3

transitional objects, so something to get you from one part of your life to the next.

The example the author gave was a teddy bear, mine was a sweater, so it can really have

a meaning to you or it could be a more traditional transitional object, but I chose to do ones that were transitional

for me personally. Number 11: if you had a rock band, write down what the name of your

rock band would be. Go. So once you've done that, we're going to put the poem together,

sort of like a puzzle. The first thing you're going to do is take number 11, which was your

rock band name, and that's going to be the title of your poem. Write that down. The first

line of your poem is from item number 6 - 3 questions for which you've never found an

answer. That's your first line, so write that down and make sure to leave some space between

all the things I'm telling you to do, so we're going to do things kind of out of order, and

then you can either reorganize them if you want later, or just keep it the same way I

tell you. Then you're going to write the last line, so like I said, keep some space, and

that is going to be from item number 9, which is 3 things that people said to you in the

last 48 hours. Then in the middle, you're going to take item 5, which is a forbidden

thought that you had pertaining to love, and put that in the middle of your poem. THen

in there somewhere, whichever order your want, put in a combination of items 4 and 7, which

is the experience you had as a child that made you angry and something about love that

you find boring. SO sort of combine those two thoughts to be one sentence, or one thought

or one idea and then put that somewhere in your poem where it mixes and if you want at

this point you can start thinking along a theme, if you've already been making connections

between the things you've put on the page already, that's a good thing and you want

to go with it. I found that while I thought that all of the items seem extremely random

at the time I was writing them down, when I started putting them in an order, sort of

slecting which ones I was going to use, I started seeing connections between them and

how there is a common denominator between all thoughts that you think, and YOU are the

common denominator, so find that commonality there and grasp onto that. Then again in there

somewhere, you're going to do a combination of items 2 and 8, so use one of your non-primary

shades and combine that with one of your slant rhymes. And then just sort of see what you

have on the page, and see what it looks like, and then go ahead and fill in spaces where

you think they need to be filled in. If you need to connect some things or move some things

around, feel free to do that. This is just sort of to get your brain thinking in a more

creative way and searching for things - searching for deeper meanings sort of. But just to get

you thinking in a certain mindset. So I'm going to read you my poem, and keep in mind

this is my first draft, so it's not very good - well, okay, I won't say that, I like it,

I really enjoy it, I enjoy reading it, and I'm happy with it at this point, especially

for a first draft. The title of my - Oh, and if you haven't finished your poem, then go

ahead and do yours now, and pause the video so that yours won't be affected by mine at

all, so pause it now. Okay, hopefully you are done with your poem now, and I would love

to hear your poem in the comments. I'm going to read you mine now. And the title is "Ouroboros",

which was my rock band name. So the title is Ouroboros. Is honey magical? And if so,

what of the bees? And what of their loyalty to the hive? Sometimes life puts us in a cage,

sometimes we put our self in one. Did you feed the cats yet? We are more like animals

than we think. But who knows if we are in the zoo or the jungle? Hanging from a tangerine

tired tree, picking fruit all day long. Don't wake me up when I'm sleeping. So that was

my poem. I really, really would love to read you guys' poems, if you want to do a video

of you reading it or just leave your poem in the comments below, I would love to hear

it. I really loved hearing everybody else's poems from the workshop because it was really

interesting to see what everybody did from one exercise. It's the same exercise, but

it really shows you, I don't know, just how differently everybody's brains think that

the other people in the class could come up with something that was so unique to them,

and it really gives you an idea of their sort of life flavor and I think that exercises

like this are really fun, because it kind of just gets you in the mood to be creative

and think a little bit differently and make connections in ways that you wouldn't have

thought of before. So i'm a big fan of writing exercises, if you have some more poetry or

short stories or other exercises, send them to me and I'd love to try some. And if you