18
Apr
2010
Poetry Month: The Regie Gibson Method
April is National Poetry Month, and to celebrate Serena from Savvy Verse & Wit organized a blog tour, showcasing all sorts of aspects of poetry. Today is my turn, and I wanted to introduce everyone to what I call “The Regie Gibson Method of Writing Poetry”.
What you see in this picture might look at first something like that kids’ game, MASH. But really, it’s key ingredients to writing a poem.
Here’s what you do:
1. Think of some categories. The ones I went with are colors, places (real and not), numbers, mythical characters, and body parts. When I did a workshop with Gibson, I definitely remember using colors and mythical characters, but these are really just suggestions.
2. Come up with three or six things to fit each category (three if you will be using one from each category, six if you will be using three from each category).
3. Pick a number, or ask someone to pick a number for you. Or, draw a spiral and ask someone to tell you when to stop. Each line of the spiral counts as one, and however many lines you end up with is your number.
4. Go through your lists and each time you get to your number, cross that word off. For example, my number was eight, so the first one I landed on was the second word in my second category. Don’t count the ones you have already crossed off.
5. Use each word in your poem.
Regie Gibson has taught this to a number of kids. This works well in a class room setting, letting students give the items in each category. It’s especially interesting to use mythical characters or places that some people haven’t heard of. He said that he once did this with 8th graders, and a line in one kid’s poem was “Dionysus chases me through the forest.” He didn’t know who Dionysus was, and when he found out that he’s the god of wine, he said, “oh my God, that’s my father.” Now, that buys into a lot of Jungian philosophy that you may not believe, but it still makes for a good exercise.
I was going to write a poem using these words but I thought maybe I’d let you do it instead.
Your words are:
Obsidian
Maize
Silver
Taj Mahal
The Moon
The Washington Monument
1
69
83
Thor
King Lear
Noah
Knee
Lips
Belly Button
Post your poem, and then come back and link to it in the comments!
Very cool teaching tool for kids.
I’m going to demur on posting a poem.
You do not, I repeat DO NOT want me to use your list to make a poem. I have a feeling that a poem with those particular body parts and those particular numbers would change the audience rating of both of our blogs. [laughing like a loon] Nice to meet you. Loving the blog tour.
Karen :0)
Thanks for participating. I’ll be tweeting your post, etc, later. Thanks for the activity. Here’s my sad attempt:
Imagine the Washington Monument
in obsidian and maize.
The silver of the moon would
shimmer on its surface
like Thor’s lightning
bounces of the knee of the sky.
See how the Taj Mahal pales
beneath King Lear’s lips
kissing the belly button
of 1.
OK, this was fun! Thanks for stretching my poetry muscles this morning, J.T. !
Here is the resultant poem of the words I was left with.
Torn
Very cool! I’m going to have to play with this.
I’ve got this posted at Win a Book for you, babe!
I’m a little confused by the rules (being more of a visual person — need to be shown rather than be told), but I bet the kids really get into this when they learn how it works! The Dionysus story is an interesting one.
My 8th grade son has been assigned to write poetry (in different forms) all month long in his Lit class; I’m pretty sure this method hasn’t been shown to them. Too bad.
Interesting exercise! I will have to try this!