Experimental Poetry 18: Interactive poetry

We explored installation poetry earlier in this series. One of the key features of a lot of installation art is that it's interactive. You don't necessarily stand there admiring the art as if you were in a gallery gazing at images. You delve in, and engage with the art using several senses. 

Installation art is not just visual. It can also be auditory, tactile, kinaesthetic, proprioceptive, and perhaps even olfactory or haptic. Interactive poetry also exploits these multiple senses to provide the reader with a participatory experience. 

In my own performance poetry I encourage my live audiences to become involved, shouting out repeated refrains, standing up or raising their hands. It brings the poetry alive and gives it deeper meaning through involvement. The audience get a work out too. We can do similarly with the written word... (even though this is a little more sedate than the ideas above).

In Gestalt psychology (the theory, not the therapy) there is something known as the law of closure. It plays on the human propensity to want to complete something that is otherwise unfinished. This can be exploited to benefit experimental poetry writing.

Method 35: Fill in the blanks. Write your poem to deliberately miss out key words. Place a blank where the word should be and ask your reader to complete the poem. The more surprising or unpredictable the word is, the better! 

Method 36: Complete the stanza. Do the same as above, but this time, an entire line is missing for the reader to complete. 

Method 37: Untitled.  Leave a blank where the title should be. Invite your reader to read the poem, and then create a title for it. Ask them to be particularly creative with this task.

Method 38; Switching words. Ask your reader to switch the position of two words in each line, or stanza of the poem. Again, the more outlandish the result, the better!

All of the above methods are great to promote collaborative writing, and are ideal for use in online poetry groups. Try some interactive poetry ideas today!

Steve Wheeler 

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes
Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams
Experimental Poetry 9: Anarchic Poetry
Experimental Poetry 10: Timed Writing
Experimental Poetry 11: Paraphrasing
Experimental Poetry 12: Deliberate Malapropism
Experimental Poetry 13: Breaking Structure
Experimental Poetry 14: Speak out Loud
Experimental Poetry 15: Quantum Elements
Experimental Poetry 16: Random Interactions
Experimental Poetry 17: Installation Poetry

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Why AI Can't be Creative

From time to time, we invite members to write guest blog posts on topical issues that impact upon poetry. Here is a fascinating article on AI and poetry/creative writing by our very own Iain Strachan, formerly a computer scientist and always a poet!

One of the keys to original creative work is that it should be.... well, original. It should contain phrases that haven't been seen before - that take us by surprise and delight us. However, a program like ChatGPT will struggle to produce anything like this, because it can only really produce output that is resembles the text and poems that have been used to train it. 

I asked ChatGPT to provide ten possible completions to this line, taken from Gerard Manley Hopkins's poem "God's Grandeur" 

    It will flame out like ... 

Here is what it came up with: 

a comet streaking through the night. 

a candle in the wind. 

a phoenix rising from the ashes. 

the last rays of a dying sun. 

fireworks bursting in the sky. 

a shooting star's brief flight. 

the embers of a forgotten fire. 

lightning splitting the heavens. 

a spark in the dark, then vanish. 

the final flare of a burning match. 

These phrases are all well-known, and not exactly unexpected; they are bland and literal. Compare that with the completion in Hopkins's poem. If you don't already know the poem this will be completely unexpected: It will flame out like shining from shook foil. 

Why is it that chatGPT can't produce stunningly original completions like that? The reason lies in statistics. In generating continuations, it uses probability, and a random number generator that is tuned (like loaded dice) to be heavily biased towards more likely (and hence less surprising) continuations. Also, if it chose an unlikely continuation, it probably won't make sense at all. There are vastly more nonsensical unexpected continuations than ones that make sense. 

What can we learn from this and apply to our own poems? A lot of our writing can be automatic, sometimes creative, but sometimes commonplace. So next time you write a poem, go through the first draft and examine each word or phrase and see if you can make a better one, instead of the expected word, make it unexpected. Make it a metaphor, rather than literal. 

Here's an example from one of my poems, describing the grid system of roads in Washington DC:

Geometric city. Anonymous streets 

Labelled with letters and numbers 

????? the shops into blocks. 

Here are chatGPT's 10 boring suggestions: 

Neatly dividing 

Methodically carving 

Carefully segmenting 

Precisely arranging 

Artfully separating 

Rigorously partitioning 

Strategically placing 

Systematically organizing 

Elegantly splitting 

Thoughtfully grouping 

Here's mine: Cheese-wire. 

I'll bet you didn't see that coming! It was based not on poems I'd seen before but lived experience; how as a kid I was fascinated to see cheese cut up with a cheese-wire.

Iain Strachan

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Experimental Poetry 17: Installation poetry

Is poetry art? You bet your last Picasso it is! 

And, because poetry is art, there should be no limits to the ways you can express yourself. Written or spoken, your words should have no boundaries. One of the most interesting and creative art movements of the last few decades is installation art. Installation art is three dimensional and site specific. It often uses mixed and/or multi media. Examples include walk through displays, totally immersive exhibits and interactive artwork. One of the most famous, and poignant installations took place at the Tower of London in England in 2014. The display was progressive, commencing in July 2014 and concluding on November 11th the same year. Ceramic red poppies were gradually placed tumbling out of the tower and onto the grass verge, until by the conclusion 888,246 had been placed. This was to commemorate every single fatal casualty of British and Commonwealth servicemen during World War 1. 

Installation poetry therefore requires a physical space, an 'idea' and the materials or media that conveys that idea. As with any form of art, your creation depends entirely upon your ability to realise (ideate) and execute it (create). 

Method 33: Hanging verse. Use a clothes line or any other line on which you can hang strips of paper. Cut out lines of text, or phrases, or single words, and clip them with clothes pegs to the line. Invite people to create their own poems using as many lines as they wish. This is best done in a public place, like a garden, park or other outdoor space. 

Method 34: Imagens. Scatter pictures, cuttings from magazine and newspapers, images and photographs across an open space and invite people to choose as many as they like as the basis to writing a poem. This works well with children in particular, but can be used to encourage anyone to write poetry.

There are so many other ideas I could mention, but these two should get you going. You can be as elaborate as you wish with installation poetry. Bear in mind it's temporary, but then... nothing lasts for ever does it?

Steve Wheeler

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes
Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams
Experimental Poetry 9: Anarchic Poetry
Experimental Poetry 10: Timed Writing
Experimental Poetry 11: Paraphrasing
Experimental Poetry 12: Deliberate Malapropism
Experimental Poetry 13: Breaking Structure
Experimental Poetry 14: Speak out Loud
Experimental Poetry 15: Quantum Elements
Experimental Poetry 16: Random Interactions

Image by Amanda Slater on Flickr used under a Creative Commons licence

Experimental Poetry 16: Random Interactions

One of the most random, experimental methods of poetry writing you can engage in involves conversations or interactions with other people. Everyone is different, has different views, interests and unique personalities so you are just about guaranteed unexpected outcomes. How you interact with people and the extent this happens will determine the outcome. 

Method 29: Encounters and conversations. Yes, if you're bold enough, you can walk up to someone at a party, in a coffee shop or even out on the street and ask them to give you a few phrases or words that come into their head. Or you can prompt them with a question. Whatever they say next will be the first line of your poem.

Method 30: Random responses. Try asking someone to give you the title for your next poem. It can be a topic or a theme. Where you go with that title once you have it is completely up to you...

Method 31: Three random words. Ask someone to give you three random words, and then write a poem incorporating them. The more random the better. If you really want to make it challenging, write just three lines!

Method 32: Favourite things. Ask someone what their favourite pop song is, and write a poem about it. Ask who is their favourite movie star or their favourite movie. The variations are endless. Be creative with your questions. 

If you want a really tough challenge write the poem there and then, in just a few minutes and read them the results. It's interesting what a little bit of pressure can do for creativity.

Go for it if you're brave enough!

Steve Wheeler

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes
Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams
Experimental Poetry 9: Anarchic Poetry
Experimental Poetry 10: Timed Writing
Experimental Poetry 11: Paraphrasing
Experimental Poetry 12: Deliberate Malapropism
Experimental Poetry 13: Breaking Structure
Experimental Poetry 14: Speak out Loud
Experimental Poetry 15: Quantum Elements

Image from Flickr used under a Creative Commons licence

Experimental Poetry 15: Quantum Elements

About 20 years ago, the artist and poet Valerie Laws created an installation called Quantum Sheep. A 'quantum' is an allowed or required amount. Laws painted words onto the backs of sheep and then watched as the flock naturally moved across the field grazing. As the sheep moved around, new poems were constantly created. You might say they were Haik-Ewes.

In reality, perfect poetry was rarely observed, but as you can see in the above image the experiment demonstrated how random movements of words could create primitive sentences and breaks in lines, and generate idiosyncratic meaning for all those who observed. Poetry is like that. It really doesn't matter too much what the author intended. The reader or observer will impute their own meaning from the text regardless. 

Now, I am not encouraging you to go out into a field with a spray can and vandalize a flock of sheep. But there are other parallel methods you can try.

Method 26: Quantum elements. You will need a little preparation for this. Create a list of 66 words, a mix of verbs (drift, fall, rise, breathe, etc), nouns (clouds, ocean, jewell, sun, etc), prepositions (over, under, through, around, below, etc), adjectives (beautiful, evil, strange, wise, etc), adverbs (loudly, slowly, tired, lonely, etc), connectives (but, and, also, with, because, etc) and definite articles (make sure you have plenty of these: 'the' and 'a' or 'an'). Assign each word a number. Now grab a couple of dice and throw them. If a one and a six come up, you have the option to use word number 16 or word number 7 (1+6), or indeed word number 61. Write each word down. Repeat the process until you have a semblance of a poem. 

If you use three dice, you have a choice of 666 words (oh no, the mark of the beast!), and if you use 4 dice the choice will of course be 6666, and so on... the more dice you use, the more madness you will generate!

Method 27: Random word search. Use the same two or three dice and select a random book from off the shelf. Throw the dice to find a page number in the book. Turn to it. The second throw (with two dice) will indicate the line number. The final throw (with two dice) will tell you the word in the line. Capture each word onto paper and watch as it builds a confection of words. With some rearrangement, you should be able to create a unique poem. 

Method 28: Quantum words. Use a similar word list, either using cut outs from a magazine or newspaper, or from your own list of written words. Put them all into a box or container, and then draw them out, one at a time - without looking. Rearrange them onto a surface and see what emerges. Potentially a more successful way of doing this is to have separate boxes for nouns, verbs, connectives etc. and draw one from each as you construct your avant garde poem.

The random variability of these methods and the vast store of words should provide you with endless possibilities to create unique poetry, and with a little massaging of the sequences, possibly even some beautiful, evocative lines. 

Steve Wheeler

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes
Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams
Experimental Poetry 9: Anarchic Poetry
Experimental Poetry 10: Timed Writing
Experimental Poetry 11: Paraphrasing
Experimental Poetry 12: Deliberate Malapropism
Experimental Poetry 13: Breaking Structure
Experimental Poetry 14: Speak out Loud

Image from Valerie Laws Website

Experimental Poetry 14: Speak out loud

Poetry is not only textual. It is also spoken word. The oral tradition of story telling through verse has a long history.

Most of my early poetry experiences were either listening to the spoken word, or on stage performing the spoken word of my own poetry. So poetry has a natural affinity with the voice - whether spoken out loud - or the inner voice, inside the mind. All of our poetry derives from our voice. Some of the best poetry I have ever experienced was heard rather than read. Here in the UK there are some awesome living poets, including John Cooper Clarke, Mike Garry and Harry Baker. The spoken word creates ambience, emotion, cadence and inflection way beyond what you might expect to encounter in a printed text. The spoken word takes poetry to the next level.

It would be only natural then, to also create poetry without using a pen, pencil, laptop, quill etc. All of these are human inventions that enable us to make writing more or less permanent. But what if we would instead create our poetry from only the speaking out loud method?

Method 25: Speaking out loud. Here's how it might work: You think of a topic (give it a title), and then begin speaking. It doesn't need to necessarily make sense, rhyme or have any specific direction. Remember my post on stream of consciousness poetry? Simply speak and the words come out. There are some excellent freestyle rappers who can do this at the drop of the hat, but they have had a lot of practice. Don't expect yours to be perfect first time. It won't be. But somewhere in the jumble of utterings and mutterings that emerge, you might find a few lines or phrases that you can develop later into a fully fledged poem. Don't forget to record it as you speak! 

Now that's experimental poetry!

Steve Wheeler

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes
Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams
Experimental Poetry 9: Anarchic Poetry
Experimental Poetry 10: Timed Writing
Experimental Poetry 11: Paraphrasing
Experimental Poetry 12: Deliberate Malapropism
Experimental Poetry 13: Breaking Structure

Image from Flickr used under a public domain licence

Experimental poetry 13: Breaking Structure

Variation in poetry? Yes please! Poetry doesn't always need to be beautiful, soothing or idyllic. Poetry can also be challenging, disturbing, grating, and even downright uncomfortable to read or listen to. Make your poem chaotic and you'll capture a lot of attention! 

How do you introduce variation into your poetry? Well, in previous posts in this series I have written about surprise end rhymes, anarchic poetry and random prompt poetry. Adding an unexpected element to your writing keeps people guessing and piques the interest. 

One of the great sins of poetry is to be predictable to the point of blandness. The key aim of all experimental poetry is to force you outside of your comfort zone and into uncharted territory. If you walk this pathway, no one will ever again be able to accuse you of being a boring poet!

Method 22: Assonant endings. Ditch the forced end rhyme! There's nothing worse than a poem that loses its credibility because the writer is forced into using words just for the sake of the rhyme! If you can't or won't break out of the shackles of the end rhyme, then try using assonance instead. Examples include love/enough and rise/tried. Here, only the vowel sound is consistent. Assonant endings will give you a greater variety of vocabulary to choose from. 

Method 23: Breaking the line. Write sentences that vary in length. Forget about tempo or rhythm. Let your words flow unobstructed across several lines. The sentence doesn't have to conclude at the end of a line. Bleed part of the sentence over into the next line. Then start another sentence on the same line. This is known as enjambment. Break up the sentence into punch sized smaller lines so that it cascades down the page. Spread the words out randomly across the page, with plenty of space between them. The options are multiple. 

Method 24: Breaking the structure. Take one of your previously written poems and examine it. What could you do to break up the structure? How could you change it by inserting line breaks, adding unconventional grammar, inserting strange punctuation, or unexpected words to jar or surprise your reader? Maybe a strange, repeated refrain will create intrigue... your variation is only limited by your imagination!

Steve Wheeler 

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes
Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams
Experimental Poetry 9: Anarchic Poetry
Experimental Poetry 10: Timed Writing
Experimental Poetry 11: Paraphrasing
Experimental Poetry 12: Deliberate Malapropism

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Experimental Poetry 12: Deliberate Malapropism

A malapropism is an error in speech or text where a similar sounding word mistakenly replaces the correct word. There are numerous examples. Have you ever been taken for granite? 

The term malapropism derives from Mrs. Malaprop, a comic character who appears in the 1775 play The Rivals, by Richard Sheridan. She is constantly prone to using the wrong words in her conversation. She mixes up allegory with alligator, and illiterate with obliterate.  However, there are plenty of earlier incidences of comic word mangling in literature, including several found in the work of William  Shakespeare. 

Modern day malapropism can be hilarious... did you know that medieval cathedrals were supported by flying buttocks? Or that the fun we have in childhood is incomparable to the fun of adultery? 

Here's a recent poem posted in Invisible Poets. The poem is I am a Warrior by Chiledu Ohagi, and this is the first stanza...

I wedge a war against my feelings
pulling down strongholds
breaking the chains of depression
My pages, my battleground
My pen, my mighty weapon
and my ink's my ammunition

It's a very good poem, but it contains a small typographical error. I wedge war should be I wage war. The error was pointed out by another member, but when you think about it, wedging war certainly sounds surreally poetic. It's on a par with writing that you'll skew for peace, or astounding the alarm. I don't think he should correct it.

Method 20: Deliberate Malapropism. This got me thinking... how surreal and experimental can you get by using deliberate malapropisms? The trick is to make the error obvious, and create a phonetic switch. Wedge sounds like wage, just as skew sounds like sue, and as astounding sounds like sounding. These are instantly recognisable as phonetic switches, because the phrases are familiar. 

Waging war is a commonly used phrase. Wedging war is not. How do you wedge a war? It's a jarring word to use, and that makes it interesting, manifesting all sorts of images. Wedging is more poetically inventive than waging. How do you skew peace? Can you astound an alarm? Again, the text suddenly becomes a little more intriguing, because the meaning now needs to be sought out. 

Method 21: Reiterative Malapropism. What words can you use that are homophones (sound like another word) or similarly sounding, but with a distinctly different meaning? Can you strengthen your existing poems by changing words with other words that sound similar, or pun-like, and enhance the meaning of the poem?

If you deliberately use phonetic errors such as malapropisms in your poetry, you're bound to attract some attention. Just be prepared to correct the correctors when they scrawl out from under their woks to point out your 'era'.

Steve Wheeler 

Previous posts in this series

Experimental Poetry 1: Found Poetry
Experimental Poetry 2: Stream of Consciousness
Experimental Poetry 3: Fake Translations
Experimental Poetry 4: Overlapping Voices
Experimental Poetry 5: Random Prompts
Experimental Poetry 6: The Movie Method
Experimental Poetry 7: Unexpected End Rhymes
Experimental Poetry 8: Calligrams
Experimental Poetry 9: Anarchic Poetry
Experimental Poetry 10: Timed Writing
Experimental Poetry 11: Paraphrasing

Image from Wikimedia Commons