The Shape of Words

How to write a research poem

My 6-week virtual writing course, the Creativity Catalyst, will be running in September/October this year. In this course we explore and play with arts-based techniques for zhuzzing up our writing processes and products.

Here's one of my favorite exercises from the Poetry module, inspired by Glenn Colquhoun's lovely poem "An Explanation of Poetry to my Father," which includes the following lines:
 

• The shape of words
  
  A is the shape of a tin roof on an old church.
  B is the bottom of a fat man. 
  C is a crab scuttling along the beach.
  X is the shape of butterfly wings.
  
                          ***
  orange is the shape of a round fruit hanging from a tree, a young woman reaching out to pick it, a kitten chasing after its own tail, an old woman weeding her garden, a small boy fishing from a pond, the sun setting over a smooth beach. 
  
  smoke is a lazy snake crawling towards the sun, two large clouds billowing, a round mouth coughing, a small bird singing in a tree, the eye of a tired child falling asleep. 
  
  love is one leg planted firmly on the ground, a spare washer for a dripping tap, that beautiful bird flying towards me or away, a broken eggshell opened on the floor.

Take a moment to notice how this poem works, particularly in the final three stanzas.  Each letter of each word – orange, smoke, love – evokes an everyday object that not only resembles that letter but also speaks to or illuminates some aspect of the word itself. 

It's easy to follow Colquhoun's example:

Choose a word – not too long – that represents your current writing project.

1. Write the word vertically, one letter per line, down the left-hand side of a sheet of paper.

2. Now describe what each letter looks like, keeping the whole word in mind as you cycle through the possibilities.

3. Read through your lines and make adjustments as needed.

4. Hey presto – you've written a research poem!

One of our Creativity Catalyst participants, PhD student and prolific bicycle blogger Nina Ginsberg, produced an exuberant riff on the word Bicycles:

• spectacles sliding down noses of poses finally seeing things differently; the face-saving yes agreements and yes non-agreements; the woman bent over the fire, the loom, the field, and the baby; an absent-present seeping delta; the tenuous mark of schoolgirl attendance; the line between the have/nots, ride/nots, care/nots, know/nots, what/nots; the pitcher that carries the water, that carries the sustenance, that carries the girl, that carries a country; the pumping hand moves of sweaty, late-night dancehall dancers.
   

I went with the word WriteSPACE:

• Write is a crooked smile, a scythe cutting through nonsense, a brain-bearing body, a telegraph pole, a spiral of rebirth.
  
  S     Here our winding road begins,
  P     here we plant our flag
  A     atop the highest mountain
  C     wrapped in the wor(l)d's embrace 
  E     pointing forward, forward, forward.

The lines of this poem came to me quickly, but I'm still unpacking their meaning.  Creative activities like this one can help you approach your research from new directions and think more playfully and profoundly about your "serious" writing.  

Sound like fun?  Join us in the Creativity Catalyst - enrollments open in July!

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