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NaPoWriMo: Day 23

April 23, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

Poetry prompt: Mind mapping through poetry

Since our creativity can be unpredictable, often times we can find ourselves having that huge idea, but still not managing to record all details, write everything down without losing a bit of it.

So for today I propose to you little tool that I use regularly to brainstorm a problem, or a project idea. I have found it to be quite helpful. It’s mind mapping – with a twist. Probably most of you are aware of this technique but as the old Latin proverb says, “Repetition is the mother of all knowledge.” Mind mapping can help you become more creative, train your visual thinking, memory, and solve problems more effectively.

The basic notion behind this technique is to visually capture, connect and sort out information, or even get a great amount of information under control in order to generate new and fresh ideas.

The process is quite simple:

You put in the center (of your paper) your main idea.

Around that idea, now write all other topics that relates to your idea, establishing new relations among main and side topics.

It’s almost like forming a tree where each branch further drives you
to generate more details and more connections.

And now the twist: try to think of this map you are building
like it is a poem.

Instead of dry listing topics and ideas, with the words and phrases you chose, give your map a rhythm, lyrical note. Use adjectives, describe emotions related to your idea, expectations, why is it important. Imagine you are writing a concrete poem for example.

Black means White

Simple no space required

Writing

No explanations is expression

Who I am impossible in that moment

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NaPoWriMo: Day 22

April 22, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

Poetry prompt: Work with opposites

Many of us get trapped in ordinary, routine thinking which makes it hard to get into a mood of generating fresh and innovative ideas. We routinely get up every morning, brush our teeth, drink coffee, go to work – mostly every day at a same time, using the same route…And to tell you the truth, it can be a creativity killer. What we need is to mix up things a little bit, challenge our habits, language and way of thinking.

We are also aware that we do live in the world comprised of opposites. In Chinese philosophy and especially in Taoism, Universe is seen through the lens of yin and yang energy, male and female, strong and weak, dark and bright, cold and warm. Perceiving reality from the opposite side can give us clue in which direction we need to move forward in order to sort things out.

So for this exercise, as a warm up I propose you pick some ordinary words, something you frequently use in your language and list the opposite meaning of that word; first that comes to your mind.

For example:

sky – bottom, ground

water – dry, yellow, sand

coffee – tea, sweet, cold

work – vacation, free time, relaxation

Do this for a limited time, maybe five to ten minutes. The idea of these warming up exercises is to somehow ‘flush out’ that ordinary thinking, and give room for more ideas to come and encourage creative problem solving.

As a next step you can pick your real problem/project you are working on and apply similar technique. If you repeatedly struggle with something, “turn over” your thinking: instead of trying to develop your best solution, think of the worst thing could happen. How can your project fail? What is the worst scenario? Write every detail of that, using some key words related to your project and answering questions when, how, who, why, how much ext. To make it more fun, write a poem about it.

The blank paper stares at me.
It only not stares: it mocks me.

Whiteness like huge mouth ready
to swallow me.
Mind wages its own war –

Not enough wordly munition to spit,
to fill the blanks of my hollow day.

Pain depletes creative power,
dressing me in new fear: when I
will I write full time again?

NaPoWriMo: Day 21

April 21, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

Poetry prompt: Mix and match

Below are written couple of words:

sky table spice medicine

hope flesh doing escape

inevitable immense minuscule golden-brown

chew pull face inhale

in between cryptic soft people

Write three haikus or very short poems, using in each poem one noun and one adjective from the list above.

I look for one face:
One that softly reflects warmth

As I sit at this cold, marble table
On which immense end shall I search for you?

Countless people, minuscule like chess figures
They defend the king with their burning wooden bodies.

NaPoWriMo: Day 20

April 20, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

Poetry prompt: Recycle

This one is similar to the previous, but it refers to your own writing. Find something that you wrote long time ago, when you were in a different mood, influenced by other circumstances and give your writing a make-over. Use your own writing as an inspiration for your new poem, dress it in new words, develop stanzas out of sentences and see where it takes you.

What’s the color of pain?
Is it yellow? For long time I thought it was yellow!
You know the yellow pain you have when Sun bursts into your eyes and skin
wanting to become dark red, like squished cherry tomato, but no..it stays yellow!
Or like the pricking lemon juice in your mouth and your tongue just absorbs icy breath.
Or is it blue? Like the mirror of my body in the near puddle before I carelessly stumble in it?

I would like it to be…like to be..green! Why green?
Because it reminds of grass blades in my hair when we played in the woods last summer.
But this pain, is just hollow, transparent lost in between days
of meaningless things, searching for its color, hoping to find rainbow you took away.

NaPoWriMo: Day 19

April 19, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

Poetry prompt: Reduce

Try to find a poem that you dislike, that you feel negative about and simply wreck it! That’s right: tear it apart! I don’t mean tearing the physical paper, but omit, reduce, erase, everything from the poem you don’t like and use it as the basis for writing a new one – in a way that feels and sounds right to you. This little, simple exercise can be really helpful later in your own writing.

If starry space no limit knows
And sun succeeds to sun,
stars are born and stars die
‘Mid countless constellations cast
just only one from you and me
moonly and dearly
to frame our destiny.

Just think! A million gods or so
will play in fortune telling game,
how long shall our love last
the Deity supreme.
It’s the only true God that exists
govern by feelings, never left for redeem.

For look! Within my hollow hand,
I hold a single grain of sand
minuscule, pointless but vast
huge in the airy dust
With each kiss earth is shaking

always new shapes making
with each breath and each touche
new prayer to the sky
to Love Divine – as such.

*adapted from Robert William Service poem ‘A Grain of Sand’.

NaPoWriMo: Day 18

April 18, 2017April 17, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

Poetry prompt: Reuse

your old books, magazines or even shopping receipts and try to create new poem. It can be similar to collage, but this time try to focus specifically on words and create your poem out of them. Play with words. Try different arrangements.

NaPoWriMo: Day 17

April 17, 2017April 15, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

Poetry prompt: In between rhyme

I suggest you start with an internal rhyme like:

I try to write, remembering your kiss as you held me tight.
‘Type, type!’ I say to myself; ‘Don’t get fooled by a sentimental hype!’

So, you see the first and the last word in the stanza rhymes, giving the verses completely new feel and meaning to the written sentence.

For your exercise, you can call to mind an issue you have and pick one word of your own interest (it might be connected to a topic you are writing on, project you are working on or any other word that ‘bugs’ you somehow).Write in flow, without too much thinking – just try to follow this one simple rule; don’t pay attention to the logic or the meaning behind your verses; use simple facts about the situation, what you think, what others might think, what you could try or what you already did, what could be holding you back and other thoughts related to the issue.

Leaving this place opens sudden emptiness
seeing with new eyes in search for forgotten happiness.

Until I encounter needed courage
I fill my heart with hope and time is forged

carved in words, written by poets of the world:
Starved for missing verbs I wait for love that is hidden and furled

under rocks of wrong, deceitful demand,
wonder yet to be discovered in unrevealed land.

NaPoWriMo: Day 16

April 16, 2017April 15, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

Poetry prompt: Catch new ideas while redefining the obvious

You pick one word – it can be a word related to your current project you are working on or just some random word you find interesting, attractive or annoying. The purpose of the exercise is in your own words to write down general definition, widely accepted meaning of the word.

Sound of you

the plates are rattling at the kitchen table
as water rustles in the sink.
Soft rubbing of a tea towel prevents water dripping.

Pattering, sputter of a shoelace on the wooden floor
and hurry of a zipper.

Silence.

Sudden kiss on my ear like soft touch of a Tinker Bell.
That’s the sound of you.

NaPoWriMo: Day 15

April 15, 2017April 15, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

Poetry prompt: Dare to compare!

Everyone once in a while faces a challenging situation to solve some problem, find an answer to a question; brainstorm an innovative idea. And that got me thinking: what if we challenge ourselves even more? What would happen with our creative flow? Now, I’m not thinking about putting pressure on ourselves, yet we all know we can ‘move’ ourselves towards productive creativity through certain exercises, but creativity is still kind of unpredictable. What I mean by challenge, I mean challenging us by comparing the problem to something else.

In poetry is very well known technique called similes. Its purpose is to compare two things, so examples of simile poems include any poem that makes comparisons using the words “like” or “as.” Two things compared don’t have to be alike (in poetry usually they are not), and they create different images in our mind, making correlations and connections that doesn’t actually exist.

So for this exercise your goal is to use at least one simile in your poem.

Threads

Some threads are broken.
Some threads forgotten.
I am a kitten lying in wicker basket
and I sharpen my clutches.

I want to scratch the sky and catche
a white mice, dragging his daily tail
upon me, always one mile ahead.
I am an owl with wide open eyes
reaching for higher branch with each
midnight hour. Insomniatic heart beats,
dances as dawn approaches. Feathered
in dim lights of a distant city, dusted
with each unspoken breath, space opens
up for rusted wings.

I am a jelly fish, transparent and naked
easy to read like an open book,
hooked by the rustling waves in melancholy
of dark freedom.

Somewhere, there is a shore
with purple sands, forming and erasing all
imagined threads, forming
new ones, under the vaults
of pesky fins, leaking like
sour milk from a plastic tin.

NaPoWriMo: Day 14

April 14, 2017 by Maja Todorovic, posted in Business in Rhyme, My personal rhyme - from time to time

Poetry prompt: Play with the “what if” clause

Take your problem or writing idea and try to look at it from the “What would happen if….?” point of view. It’s a great way for creativity “spikes” that we all need when we feel stuck and lack inspiration. It’s also a great starter for your writing of a poem, story and will initiate many new creative thoughts to come forth.

What if?

Your dreamy face floats on my pillow.
With smile, it makes me wonder:

What if I am your morning shower?
I would relentlessly bath you in
sparkling silver water, pour over your masculine body
and search for the tiniest pores on your firm skin
to get forever lost in you.

What if I am the button on your shirt?
I would be the one, resting on your chest,
one that listens to whispers of your heart,
and sometimes bounces, jumps and shakes
in the rhythm of your loud, silly laugh.

What if I am your evening glass of wine?
I would caress your lips with shiny kisses
and be the one red drop that tickles your tongue
and inebriates your senses.

What if you and me,
two clenched and shriveled bodies
stay forever locked in this moment?

sky	table	spice	medicine
hope	flesh	doing	escape
inevitable	immense	minuscule	golden-brown
chew	pull	face	inhale
in between	cryptic	soft	people