BM: Blog Movement

Hey You,
It appears that you have found "This is My Poet Hand;" a blog that was active from  2009 - 2011.
Good job! But we don't use it anymore. Sorry.

But. But where's the WU-SLam blog? Surely, WU-SLam has a blog. Why can't I find it? Why doesn't this premier slam poetry community have a blog??!!

Hey, hey, hey. Shh. Shhhhh. It's okay. Calm down. Listen.

Do you hear that rumble?
It's the sound of us moving to Tumblr.
wuslam.tumblr.com





Did you click the link?
Click it already.

Inklings Prompt 4/18: Sound Poetry

WE RETURN with another Inklings prompt! I asked the group to do some weird stuff this week, and they were awesome about it.

We started out making lists of songs--preferably songs with lyrics.

1. List 5 songs you've heard in the last week, voluntarily or otherwise.
2. List 5 songs that are familiar to you. Think about songs your parents played to you, or songs that had an impact on you when you were young.
3. List 5 songs that annoy you or bother you.

Next, I asked everyone to make a list of sounds that you can make with your mouth or your body. These were a lot of fun. Try to figure out some new ones you didn't know you could do, and don't be afraid to, you know, make noises.

Next, listen to The Mrs. Gets Her Ass Kicked by Tracie Morris, which you can find here. I nabbed this poem from a CUPSI lecture on sound in poetry. Thank you, thank you, CUPSI speaker!

We had a really great discussion about the piece. There's a lot of unusual stuff going on here, including the fact that Tracie Morris didn't actually write any words to make this poem. She borrows an existing song and pulls it apart, playing off its original context to talk about domestic violence. The extent to which the poem relies on performance kind of blew my mind. It would be a really difficult thing to put on the page, right? I think as slam poets, most of us work by writing all the poem's text and then constructing a performance around the words. It's easy to forget that performance can have meaning on its own.

At this point, we wrote on one of two prompts:

Write a poem using only lyrics from a song (or songs) on your list.
OR write a poem that incorporates the sounds you brainstormed earlier.
OR some combination of the two.

The crew came up with a wide range of collage-y song mashups and poems interspersed with sound effects. The consensus seems to be that Inklings isn't long enough to make something like that work, but I think it gave everyone something to think about.

Enjoy the rest of your National Poetry Writing Month!

> MP3 of The Mrs. Gets Her Ass Kicked by Tracie Morris
> More work by Tracie Morris on PennSound

Inkling's Prompt 3.21.11

Inklings Prompt

OPTION 1

List:

2 places you’ve been within the past month

2 people you’ve met within past 5 years

2 objects that you’ve lost in the past year

2 emotions you’ve felt in the past 2 weeks

2 childhood memories from… childhood

Write a poem in which you compare any of these 10 objects, no minimum or maximum.

OPTION 2

Write a poem using 5 of the 8 words of the following words:

1. Belligerent

2. Red

3. Whimsical

4. Drunk

5. (Your name)

6. Oranges

7. Repetitive

8. Clueless

Scary Movies

BY KIM ADDONIZIO

Today the cloud shapes are terrifying,

and I keep expecting some enormous

black-and-white B-movie Cyclops

to appear at the edge of the horizon,

to come striding over the ocean

and drag me from my kitchen

to the deep cave that flickered

into my young brain one Saturday

at the Baronet Theater where I sat helpless

between my older brothers, pumped up

on candy and horror—that cave,

the litter of human bones

gnawed on and flung toward the entrance,

I can smell their stench as clearly

as the bacon fat from breakfast. This

is how it feels to lose it—

not sanity, I mean, but whatever it is

that helps you get up in the morning

and actually leave the house

on those days when it seems like death

in his brown uniform

is cruising his panel truck

of packages through your neighborhood.

I think of a friend’s voice

on her answering machine—

Hi, I’m not here—

the morning of her funeral,

the calls filling up the tape

and the mail still arriving,

and I feel as afraid as I was

after all those vampire movies

when I’d come home and lie awake

all night, rigid in my bed,

unable to get up

even to pee because the undead

were waiting underneath it;

if I so much as stuck a bare

foot out there in the unprotected air

they’d grab me by the ankle and pull me

under. And my parents said there was

nothing there, when I was older

I would know better, and now

they’re dead, and I’m older,

and I know better.

Idiomatic Groups (Inklings 2-21)

This is a two part prompt for you and your friends. (I'm going to use the plural "you" from now on because I hope you have a writing buddy.)

First, you need to listen to Feeling This by blink 182. In addition to be being a great song, it also serves two purposes today's prompt

Listen to the lyrics and try to pick up some of the idioms.

Now that you have a sense for some idiomatic expressions, you should free write for 20-40 minutes, depending on how much time you have to spare. Here's the list of idioms I used

Bite off more than you can chew

Clean up your act

To each his/her own

Cold shoulder

Fighting a losing battle

Bread and butter

A bubble burst

Change of heart

Turn back the clock

Wouldn’t be caught dead

By the skin of one’s teeth

Pay the piper

Price of Progress

Under the weather

When hell freezes over

A New York Minute

Take by storm

(Wo)Man Of his(/her) word

Jack of All Trades

Silver Bullet

Feel free to use any of those or something you come up with, but make sure you're writing about the same thing with your friend.

~~~
A story: During the creative process for their new album, the two front men for blink 182 went into separate rooms and wrote for about an hour. When they came out and shared the work, they realized they wrote about sex: One about the physical and lustful side and the other about the emotional and tender side. They decided to the put the two together and thus a hit was born.
~~~
Now, you and friend should sit down and try to mix match the pieces you have and see if you can't come up with a cool piece.

Inklings Prompt, 02/14/11 Valentine's Day

This prompt loves you. In fact, it would like to offer you a box of chocolates, red roses, and a creative jumpstart to your brain. That last part is sexual.

Anyway Happy Valentines Day! This prompt has two parts: the first focusing on the stereotypical abstract language of holidays/love and the second focusing on the history behind Valentine's Day in particular and the concept of traditional basis for holidays.

Unfortunately you wont be able to close your eyes as originally intended during Inklings:

Write the first concrete image that you see in your mind's eye when you read these abstract words.

1. Celebrate

2. Family

3. Sex

4. Passion

5. Tradition

6. New

7. Marriage

8. Happy

9. Holiday

10. Divorce

Wasn't that stimulating? You can stop now if you want and write about one of these abstract words using your concrete image and other related concrete language.

Now Valentine's Day isn't just for making October babies. It's generally about a Christian marrying couples during a time it was made illegal for completely rational and in no way ridiculous reasons. Long story short, he is executed. We forever rue this day and attempt to absolve ourselves by offering one another chocolates, flowers, and our genitalia.

The story I brought to Inklings can be found online anywhere by searching "Valentine's Day Legend Blind Girl" in google, or some other fancy search engine if you're a rebel. I won't copy the text into this post since it is exceedingly long.

After reading the story, reflect on the overall concept of how Valentine's Day nowadays doesn't give a shit about what happened to St. Valentine. Now take that anger that I'm sure you have now and channel it into this: write your own legend behind a real or madeup holiday and focus on how this psuedotradition has been lost amongst modern revelry.

Or write about flowers and chocolates. That's cool too.

Grand Slam's a-coming!!

Hey all,

Whether you realized it or not, WU-SLam's Grand Slam is coming up this Friday at 8:00pm in Edison Theater, featuring the incredible Mr. George Watsky.

What? You don't know what slam is? Well, dear friends, I can enlighten you. Merely follow this link and be amazed.

http://www.vimeo.com/19139075

Get excited or Naia will hunt you down.

December Slam Videos Online

Remember how awesome the December Slam was? Footage of the slam is now available on our YouTube channel. Check it out here.

But first, a rap by our December feature, Nate Marshall of Vanderbilt.



Listen to some dope poems and get psyched! For January 28th and the Grand Slam approaches.

>> 2010 December Slam playlist