Writing about tables
Sitting round a table with my writing group, trying to inspire them to write a collaborative poem about a table.
Here’s the exercise.
1. List Poem (round the table)
I wrote at the top of a sheet of paper, 10 things to remember about a….
Below was a list, 1-10, widely spaced for participants to write in (see below).
Each person in my group (6 that day) took a sheet, chose a subject, wrote a phrase, and passed on to the next person to add a phrase on that subject. When the sheets had been passed round ten times, each person took one of the sheets and wrote a poem or story from these collaborative items.
2. What if the table wobbles?
I’d hoped that the exercise would jolt them into surprise. Into writing something new from different pieces. It must have been a weakness in my instructions, because what they wrote took their material sequentially and logically rather than diving off at creative tangents as I had hoped.
Maybe the exercise should have been: 10 different/disparate/surprising/confronting/contradictory things to know about a table.
3. Another table poem
It seems I’m not the only person who likes writing about tables. Here’s a great one I’d never read before.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49622/perhaps-the-world-ends-here
And another:https://childrens.poetryarchive.org/poem/table/
I’m sitting at my own banged up table, drilling the rot out with a pencil, wondering if I can fill the hole with another scrap of pencil and some glue. It’s an ancient table, rescued from an abandoned farm by my wife. We’ve had so many meals at it, the grandkids playing Racing Demon, doing a solar system jigsaw, or singing grace.
So here I sit and remember and revise my own attempt at a table poem.
Anyone who is reading this, is welcome to try the exercise and adapt it as necessary.
The main thing is to try to surprise yourself and to fly off at as many tangents as possible.