4 tbsp of freckles
2 earrings, mocked
4 front teeth, finely chopped
3 German homeworks, finely copied
2 buttery goalie gloves
500g of text messages
2 missed calls
1 nightmare
6 x 400g cans of tears
1 memorial tree, planted
1 large glass red wine (optional)
8 mates, crushed
4 tbsp of Prince Charming on repeat
1 tbsp of trying our best
Anniversary pint, to serve
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Game 1: Find a recipe online or from a book.
Game 2: Think of a person in your life.
Game 3: Write INGREDIENTS OF YOU at the top of a page.
Game 4: Keep the numbers, weight, method etc (eg. ‘3 large diced’) but replace all the foodstuff (eg. ‘Onions’) with qualities, hobbies, traits, charming stories etc of the person you thought of. Make the list longer if you need.
Someone you’d travelled with –
wet eyed, beer foam-lipped,
in a reindeer onesie –
found everything you said funny.
Things he had never told anyone
chirped from his mouth like birdsong.
At the other end of a panicked call
the man in the onesie – set for a fall –
back to being a stranger
dead in your mind only six hours later.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
(Written by grabbing a paragraph from Mark Watson’s book ‘Contacts’, rearranging it to a 10 line poem, removing lines 2,4,6,8,10 and replacing them with my own.)
Game 1: Grab a book you love and choose any old paragraph from one of the first pages.
Game 2: Reformat the paragraph so it’s a poem made of 10-syllable long lines.
Game 3: Now delete every other line.
Game 4: Fill in the gaps with your own 10 syllables to make it a rhyming couplet poem.
(Credit the author if you share the poem.)
I’m not a giant.
But at six foot four
I need to bend my knees in the shower.
I look like a flower
moving its head to find the sun,
except I hunt for rain clouds.
If a shower is too powerful
it can feel like a group of wet snipers
completing their mission through my chest.
If the drizzle is too light a sprinkle
then what’s the point?
I used to blame a weak shower
for my dour moods, or disappointing smell,
or for the drought that would leave me
too dry to get out of bed.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Game 1: Write down the first word that pops into your head.
Game 2: Write down the following: 3 words that rhyme with the original word, 2 synonyms of the original word and 1 opposite of the original word.
Game 3: Take 7 minutes to write a poem in any style you like, but make sure you use all 7 words you’ve written at some point.
I used to tell people
your lips moved weirdly when you spoke.
You weren’t bad on children’s TV.
I think I was annoyed
because you looked taller than me.
I like your podcast
because I’m a big boy now.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Game 1: Take a minute to think of a celebrity you like.
Game 2: Get into a blazing row with them for 4 minutes. Consider: What would it be about? What would you say? How far would you go? Would you get personal?
Game 3: Spend 5 minutes trying to make up with them in a poem.
I try not to
believe a word
but sometimes
they’re said too loud.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Game 1: Listen to the instrumental piece
Tall Tales by Human Pyramids.
Game 2: Listen to it 3 more times on repeat and see if any lyrics or a poem come to mind.
Carl tells tales 