Monday, August 12, 2013

Monday Poetry Stretch - Snowball

It will be in the nineties today, but I'll be keeping cool writing snowball poetry. Here's an introduction.

The OULIPO is a form created in 1960 by a writer and mathematician. The form is designed to examine verse written under strict constraints. There are many constraint forms. Snowball is one of these forms.
  • Snowball: A poem in which each line is a single word, and each successive word is one letter longer. This form could also start with one word with each line growing by one word.
You can read more about this form at Wikipedia and Poets.org. The official site is here, but alas, I do not read French. (However, the Google language tools are somewhat helpful.)

There is an interesting article entitled Snowballs and Other Numerate Acts of Textuality that has a nice introduction to the form. YOu can find this snowball poem by John Newman there.
I
am
now
post
haste
(sort of)
posting
new topic
to discuss.

do you enjoy
constraints?
does word play
give headeaches?
are you confused?

This is a snowball,
A poetic form which
was created by those
who group themselves
with the name of Oulipo.
Every line contains one
Additional letter. U like?

I hope you'll join me in writing a snowball poem this week. Please share a link to your poem or the poem itself in the comments. Have fun with this one!

2 comments:

  1. I love poetry. I do a lot with my children at school. I'm so glad to see others enjoying poetry!
    Sarah Winchell
    Teaching Resources for the Classroom

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've been out of town doing teacher training for a week; I look forward to seeing what's on this week! Is everyone on vacation?

    ReplyDelete