Click here to read about the #ExquisiteCorpse project at Teen Librarian's Toolbox
It’s the last Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month 2012! Today, we’re partnering with Karen Jensen, the mastermind of Teen Librarian’s Toolbox, to host a day-long, interactive poetry project on Twitter– and we want you to join us!
We’ll be building an Exquisite Corpse poem by collecting the lines you tweet with the hashtag #ExquisiteCorpse. You can follow the poem as it is written by searching Twitter for the #ExquisiteCorpse hashtag to see our collaborative work unfold in real time. You can also join in the writing project by reading the latest line and then tweeting your own line to build on it.
Exquisite Corpse is a fun way to celebrate National Poetry Month with friends and writers, or students and patrons at your library. It’s one of Poets.org’s 30 Ways to Celebrate, and the game has been around for a long time:
Exquisite Corpse is a collaborative poetry game that traces its roots to the Parisian Surrealist Movement. Exquisite Corpse is played by several people, each of whom writes a word on a sheet of paper, folds the paper to conceal it, and passes it on to the next player for his or her contribution.
Cool right? We think Twitter is the perfect way to play this game online, and we’d love you to join in the fun! Here are some tips and guidelines for our version of the game to get you started:
- Follow the #ExquisiteCorpse hashtag on Twitter to see the latest line
- Respond with your own line, and don’t forget to include #ExquisiteCorpse so the next poet can play!
- Make sure to get your lines in by 5pm CST.
- Check back here this evening to read the completed poem!
Ready? GO!
~Erinn
UPDATE: 5:15 PM April 27
Our Exquisite Corpse experiment was a wonderful success– all day, there was a steady stream of strange and wonderful poetry careening through the Twitterverse. Thank you to all who participated!
Here is the final product:
Exquisite Corpse, 4/27/12
Hearts break, tears fall, when goodbyes are said.
Arms embrace and spirits fade. There is no sweet in this sorrow.
The birds were chirping
their sound so sweet
as if nothing were wrong
not dark stain of something that used to be alive
in the street, not you
not me.
Skaters menace, line up, shake hands.
Game on!
but left on their own, would they choose to stay in
and only watch the yellow birds in the clipped grass?
A humming handful of sassy cat slinked
across the sofa and into my morning coffee lap
purring lasciviously, yielding nothing.
Surrounded by memories
searching for truth
I trudge on through existence
Just another workday
A rail of roses
hints at what’s to come:
the cat humming
in perfumed air,
a knife-blade exposed,
a candle the switch light.
My curled toes dangle over the
ex…cru…ciating…ly slow (spinning) linoleum
Arise! the feline said
find the moon is dead
murdered over hours in your sunshine bed.
There MUST be a God! This is one of the signs I prayed for—
a word that rhymes with ‘orange.’ So now I die an exquisite corpse.
Orchid broken nail,
a wintergreen gum, a Metra ticket punched APR 26,
a note that starts “Sinta..”
float away from her body.
A bus of no one stopping in Charlesburg and chugging West
C-thunk, c-thank of plastic vessels, vestiges of all we’ve consumed.
All that we can never have again.
We’ve consumed the day
in Paris, the rain
drops lengthening like shadows
ahead of us, quiet
creeping into the space we fill
Using only our bodies, warmblooded and vibrant,
we move through the quiet air,
birdsong reflecting every surface
takes the moss in pinches from the bouldered eye.
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2 comments
Teen Librarian's Toolbox says:
Apr 28, 2012
I am so impressed with the lines that were shared. Thank you for partnering on this project with us over at the Teen Librarian’s Toolbox. It was a great way to wind down the National Poetry Month celebration. I love what you do here and how you remind us all to dive into the world of art.
Susan Layug says:
Apr 28, 2012
Congratulations on creating a beautiful collaborative exquisite corpse poem. It’s a chock-full of sensory-rich tweets. What a dramatic and poetic finale to National Poetry Month! And thank you for including my tweets.
I have a couple of suggestions for your next project (or for this one, if it’s not too late)
1. Use @Storify to make a story/list of the tweets that have been/are being considered as you go along through the project. This will likely achieve two things:
a. @Storify might pick up your project and feature you, giving your organization and your project(s) more exposure.
b. Tagging the tweeters whose tweets you have considered/are considering in @Storify gives an incentive to those tweeters to retweet your ongoing project
2. Use an app on your site blog that allows you to tag the tweeters of the final creation/outcome of your project, then tweet their inclusion to inform them. As in @Storify, this will likely prompt your tweeters to retweet you and promote your project(s), site and Twitter presence.
A successful model of these strategies is @TellMeMoreNPR’s “Muses and Metaphors 2012″ (hashtag #tmmpoetry) which garnered a lot of responses in the twitterverse.
Here are @TellMeMoreNPR’s blog and @Storify site:
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/02/148546091/muses-and-metaphor-2012
http://storify.com/idavar/muses-and-metaphor-2012?utm_source=embed_header
Again, thank you for the inclusion. Looking forward to your next projects.
Yours sincerely,
Susan Layug
@stlayug
http://www.tumblr.com/blog/susanlayug