Everyday Creative Blog

Today is a tiny writing lesson--no, let's call it an example. I'm going to use a poem written by my almost-10-year-old nephew, Campbell.

How it worked: I fed him a prompt for every line and he wrote the following short poem. Ok, I admit I took his dictation. But he was sporty enough to respond to me sitting down next to him, opening up a notebook and saying, basically, go.

Here's the poem:

The Wonderful Life of a Trophy WinnerBy Campbell Mishel

Someone won a trophyThe orange grapefruit is tastyThe smell of cactus flowers blooming—They smell like the remote!The TV sits in the flower fieldGrandpa and the honking horns of ParisAnd I sit in this chair with my cup of coffee.

You could say this poem employs stacked images. For example, the individual lines seem unrelated but by stacking images and creating a collage of senses, the reader is left with a feeling of something. For me, it feels like someone reminiscing.

Want to know how this poem was written?

In brackets I'm going to write each prompt I fed to Campbell. And you'll see how easy it can be to play with writing--even p-p-p-poetry. The best part of it, is you can write with someone else--a friend, child or young person, even yourself.

Ok, here we go. First, off, I used a trick written of in an earlier post about Looking Up. The poem line is in itals.

[First, I told Campbell to look around, find an object, put it in a line. We're sitting at a kitchen table with the TV nearby. As his attention wandered I said, Don't think about it, just give me a line.]Someone won a trophy

[What exactly does it smell like; he took his cue from an object in the room]They smell like the remote!

[Insert an image from nature; and he still keeps bringing in surrounding objects]The TV sits in the flower field

[Now mention a place, or a person]Grandpa and the honking horns of Paris

[I told him this was the last line--bring it home, boy!]And I sit in this chair with my cup of coffee.

Then I asked Campbell to think about a title -- and that there wasn't a better or worse/right or wrong title, just to play around with it. Look how he instrinctively took the feel of the poem and titled it: "The Wonderful Life of a Trophy Winner."

Pretty cool huh? Young minds have amazing creative resources. We can learn from them.