Chasing the Dictionary: An exercise from The Red Wheelbarrow Group
When I feel inclined to read poetry, I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as the poetry of sentences.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The Red Wheelbarrow: Canberra 2012-14
For some years when I lived in Canberra, I ran a small writing group, that used all sorts of books and props as stimuli, and I carried my gear to the cafe where we met in a red wheelbarrow. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45502/the-red-wheelbarrow
The aim of our exercises was to avoid writers’ block by breaking down a sense of ownership and control of the result. Sometimes we used surprising stimuli: https://charlotteclutterbuck.com/measurement-metaphor-symbol-connotation/
At other times we used collaborative methods.
Using dictionaries of languages you don’t speak
Meeting the words of another language can make us more aware of our own, where words come from, or how concepts are differently expressed in other languages.
- Choose one or more dictionaries. Flick through, finding words that interest you.
- Some definitions may be ‘found poems’
- Pursue tangents or threads of meaning.
- Write whatever comes to mind.