Prompt 7: Reality Television, plus housekeeping

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Firstly some housekeeping


There has been a slew of new members recently. On the one hand, this is great! Welcome! But on the other hand I feel the need to reiterate of what HammeredPoetry is actually for (because I sense a little confusion).

:bulletgreen: The point of #Hammered is for members to improve as poets.

:bulletgreen: I believe that the best way to improve is to  s t r e t c h  y o u r s e l f.

:bulletgreen: So I set prompts that are varied and quite demanding in order to make you lot (and me; I do the prompts too because I also want to improve) attempt, work at, even perhaps master, poetic styles, subjects and techniques that most of the time you/I haven’t tried before.

:bulletgreen: You are meant to work hard at them. You are not meant to toss off a quickie, post it, and wait for the +favs. You’re meant to spend time working, edit before you post, and then welcome critiques; preferably by acting on them, at the very least by taking the comments seriously and bearing them in mind when you write future poems.

:bulletgreen: Recently I have been encouraging you to critique each other. I mean this. It’s not a group rule, but you learn as much (if not more) by giving critique as you do by getting it.

:bulletgreen: If you won’t stretch yourself to fulfil the prompt requirements, or you don’t want constructive criticism, then your poem doesn’t belong in the group. (You may still use the prompt, but don’t submit your poem.)

:bulletgreen: #Hammered prompts are not competitions unless I explicitly say they are. Competitions will occur a maximum of once a year. We’ve just had one, so we’re back to plain old prompts where the only incentive is becoming a better writer.

On that note, some snazzy new links

Write Better
The Basics of Giving Critique
Literature Critique Tips
Do You Really Want Critique?
#Critique-it relaunches and is looking for lit submissions



Prompt #7 – Reality Television



A popular definition for poetry is that it “shows us the familiar in a new light.” Like this:


the fork in the road
that looks nothing like a fork or a spoon, in fact
at best, maybe a knife bent in a dishwasher
that leans to one side.

from The New Dentist  by Jaimee Kuperman

-

“When I come into places like this and there are people holding

Coffee cups to their lips and they look at me,
Are they about to drink the coffee or not to drink the coffee?”

from Coffee Lips by David Ferry

-

My mother’s rosary-pinching hands
stack pigs in blankets on a plate.

Teeny uncircumcised Buddha penises
(cocktail hot dogs in strips of dough)

from Hard Times by Michael Ryan


Now I don’t think turning the familiar strange is the limit of what poetry can do, but poetry can certainly do it pretty well. It can zoom in on the tiny details of real life or survey the vistas seen from hilltops, rethink the same old sights we pass by every day or let us experience something brand new which suddenly turns all we know upsidedown. How does it do this? By telling us how reality really looks. Not by reciting the clichés, or relying on the images in our heads, but by having a good hard stare at what is actually there to see.

So without more ado:

1. Go out and do some people watching AND/OR go somewhere very high up and have a good hard think about what the view actually looks like.

2. The poem: 3 – 7 stanzas (stanzas are obligatory); max 60 lines.

3. Think of each stanza as a new camera shot. At least 1 stanza should be a wide-shot or panorama. At least one stanza should be a close up giving us an extraordinarily observed detail from everyday life. Other shots you might include: interior/exterior, camera pans, close ups on faces, character’s POV shots.

4. Experiment with translating film into poetry. Cut away. Go so close we can’t tell what something is, then surprise us with the wide-angle. What about voice-overs? Subtitles? Titles? Credits?

5. Your subject: reality. Think of this as a kind of poetic documentary. If you want to talk about something exotic, scientific, historical, go ahead (but do your research thoroughly!) Alternatively take your cue from the prompt title and give us a glimpse into the everyday life we think we know.

Your deadline is February 29th. Submit poems to the 7 Reality Television folder. If you have any questions, ask away.

© 2012 - 2024 CrumpetsHarvey
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fackeltanz's avatar
Bah! I just thought of an idea for this prompt, but then I came back and looked at the specific requirements and realized that I've been trying to come up with concepts that have little (if anything) to do with this particular challenge.

Oh well. There's always next month.