Creativity is a skill that can be refined through experimentation. By encountering the ideas of others or breaking out of our routine way of working we can find new inspiration. Today for the MTB you’ll try one of 3 approaches to create a new poem:

Reduction: Think of this like a simmering sauce that thickens and becomes more flavorful. Systematically erase words, concepts, metaphors, and any ‘baggage’ from a piece of your own writing until it is ‘ultimately’ reduced.

Oulipo: Don’t be intimidated by the name of this technique of constrained writing. Constraints are used to come up with new ideas, forms, and inspiration. The crux of the philosophy behind it is to ‘(seek) new structures and patterns that may be used by writers in any way they enjoy’. For example you could write a Snowball poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer. Or you could pick a random page in your favorite book and use the first word you see at the beginning of each line of your poem.

Surprising Conceit: Use vocabulary or phrases related to one subject or idea to write about another, pushing metaphor and simile as far as you can. For example, use the language of carpentry to write about childhood or philosophic language to describe a landscape.

So pick an experiment and join us today. If you’d like to share your process please feel free to discuss it in the comments or as a note after your poem. Have fun with it!

Now, if you are new to dVerse Poets Pub, this is what you’ve got to do.

Write a poem and post it to your site/blog.
Enter a link to your poem and your name by clicking Mr Linky below.
You will find links to other poets. Read and comment on other poet’s work.
If you are promoting your work on social media, use the tag #dversepoets.

Note that the prompt will be open for 48 hours. Thanks!