Game 1: Google image search ‘Front doors’.
Game 2: Pick a door you like (or dislike).
Game 3: Take 8 minutes to write a poem about what goes on behind that door.
#NaPoWriMo Writing Exercise 12: WHO LIVES IN A HOUSE LIKE THIS?
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Face
Written using sentences found by searching for ‘face’ in my WhatsApp search bar.
Now that is what I call a face.
Such a great face in that photo.
He looked at me with that little strained face
and a tiny nugget came out.
Look at the satisfaction on that face!
He likes it when you brush his face.
It hit him right in the face, poor bloke.
The face says it all.
I’d love to see your face.
I miss your face.
Such a lovely face.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
#NaPoWriMo Writing Exercise 11: TEXT SEARCH
Game 1: Think of a word you think you use a lot (eg. How or why or what or when or who.)
Game 2: Search for that word in the search bar of your phone’s WhatsApp or text message app.
Game 3: Spend a few minutes jotting down some of the lines you find in those messages and make a poem using those sentences.
wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Sainsbury
Jeff Sainsbury (born March 21, 1956),
also known by his nickname from the stranger
at the window, Bus Stop Man,
is a grey haired chap known for sitting
at bus stops with an orange bag for life.
Career: His shoulders scream Army,
his hands whisper Baker.
Personal Life: Despite sitting at the bus stop
for an hour (sometimes two) at a time,
he never gets on a bus. He just chats
to anyone who walks by with a smile.
Controversy: He is a ghost.
See Also: The Alexandra Pub.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
#NaPoWriMo Writing Exercise 10: STRANGERPEDIA
Game 1: Think of a nameless stranger you saw in the street recently or out the window or on the news or on TV.
Game 2: Give them a name.
Game 3: Write the Early Life, Career and Personal Life (maybe even Controversies) sections of their Wikipedia page. Get descriptive and be specific.
Ingredients of a Mercedes apprentice
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
#NaPoWriMo Writing Exercise 9: INGREDIENTS OF YOU
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.
Contacts
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.)
#NaPoWriMo Writing Exercise 8: REPEAT AND DELETE
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.)
Knees in the shower
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
Carl tells tales 