So, for the first poem after the last series, we’ve got a poem that responds physically to the title. Usually, with poetry and other writing, words come first. It is fun and challenging and worthwhile to turn that notion on its head sometimes.

 

Here, form || the space, the design, the architecture of the image || is the driving force behind the poem. I cut words away I usually would have left, in favor of the lovely zebraesque* pattern created down the lower center of the page.

space ration - 1 (2)
There is no need to reserve these kinds of physical decisions for erasure: I challenge you to bring this sort of process / experiment into your paper/ink poems as well.

SPACE PROMPT

  • Get playful with your work. Do not be confined by language today.
  • Use your eyes, use your sense of balance, use your frame of vision.
  • Consider the word “space.” Consider the word “ration.”

Perhaps you will start with a title? Maybe you will find one single line you definitely want to use? Maybe you will cut out a rectangle of text and black out everything on the inside. Or will you create an actual image out of black and white lines? Will you be so bold as to not give a single care to what your poem says, but only how it looks? Could that be poetry too?

BONUS WORK-SPACE photo:

space ration - 3

*Zebraesque, a definition:

Anything, physical or otherwise, that reminds one of the zebra she drew in fourth grade for her report on zebras, researched lovingly (but not thoroughly) from the one paragraph entry in the 1974 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, for which she received an A+ based solely on the artwork–convincing said little girl that Art could in fact be her escape from Work.