Wednesday, January 13, 2010

The Paper Empire

Today, my first poem got workshopped in my Poetry class.

It's called The Paper Empire and is a freestyle, comedic story of how an office gets conquered by loose leaf paper. Originally, I'd written a sad poem about a sad moment and then read another sad poem someone else had written and decided there is simply too much sad poetry in the world. So instead, the paperclips became POWs and my beloved pen was taken hostage and my office fell at fifteen hundred hours (and I even wrangled in an Ikea reference).

The workshop went well. People called it clever, brilliant and polished (which it's not), and seemed to focus so much on the humour and wit that they forgot about the crappy adjectives and awkward phrasing. So no embarrassment for me!

On a completely unrelated topic, the guy sitting in front of me on the bus today had a half-burnt cigarette tucked behind his ear. I used sheer willpower to revive an ember and have it burn his hair off but it didn't work, so I just sat and tried to ignore the stench. Oh well.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

That cigarette butt & smoker would be a good subject for a poem. Have you ever noticed the destitute trawling through public ashtrays, next to benches, etc. Why is it that so many of the poor smoke? And why do so many poets?