Month: September 2019

poetry, writing exercise

Two-by-Four, a new (to me) Poetry Form

carolyncordon

 

I recently discovered a new form of short poetry, the Two-by-Four. It is a poem of two words to a line, over four lines. I found it on the website of a South Australian poet Paul Szlosek, who has a fine interest in poetics and writers/writing. I love short forms of poetry, and this one is a neat little package, with no time for wasting words, ideal for readers with no time to waste!

In the original form there was no title, but I’m inclined to go along the way the website owner I mentioned went, and use titles, in the interest of clarity of understanding. This is the link for that website, go along there, to read more about it. Then come back here and read my own attempts are writing Two-by-Fours. And after that, why not have a try yourself, and to write some of your own Two-by-Fours!

Not Me

Some people

say poetry

must rhyme –

I don’t …

 

 

Political Correctness

More than

anything else,

it’s just

being nice …

Well that was fun to do, and if a writer can write two fine pieces of work in less that half an hour, then that is a fine form of writing for sure. I’m quite happy with this little poetic form, for sure, and I can see myself writing many more of them in the future!

Thank you very much Paul, for bringing this form of short poetry into my poetry world! If you have any thoughts about these little poems feel free to leaveĀ  a comment!

 

 

meaning in life, Philosophy

Searching for Your Soul

carolyncordon

Today, I’m a bit excited, because I’m giving a poetry workshop on the theme of searching for your soul. We will look at what the soul is, what it means to those present, and ways it fits or could fit into our lives.

Doing good for ourselves, in materialistic terms is ‘good’ to do, but the good in that is only temporary, and does not much at all for the soul, as far as I see things. It may seem different to others, and of course, we can all see things in different ways.

Living a safe life, with money matters all under control, so that you always have food and shelter, these are certainly important things in life. But that is what animals aim to do every day, we are humans, and surely we have a need to search for more than that?

That is where the search for the soul comes into things, as far as I see it. The soul, higher purpose, raison d’etre or however you refer to it, that takes you much higher than mere animal level of existence, into the more thinking levels of being, into ideas of more Spiritual leanings. These are the things I expect we will be talking and writing about today.

I have another workshop with the same community group next month, which if it goes as I plan, we will be looking at the words we write today, and turn them into absolutely perfect poetry, meaningful and magical!

Finding words, talking about things, writing things down, these are the first stages in the writing of meaningful poetry, and of course if your theme is ‘Searching for your soul’, you would expect much of meaning to be written about for the session.

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The process of editing words into something better, that is where mere words can become literature. Using poetic devices such as assonance, alliteration, rhyme, simile, metaphor and such things, this is what can turn initial words into fine poetry.

Helping other people to do this, that surely is a part of my own raison d’etre! Helping others to turn the everyday and ordinary into more meaningful and important things, finding the soul, examining ways to do the best possible thing in life, these are surely what every person should be working toward? I thing so, and I’d love to know how you feel about these things. Please leave a comment, we can discuss these higher matters here.