16 March 2013
Hello fellow Opussians, a thought of presenting you this one poem type to give you some inspiration popped up in my head. News-poems. It's not a well known type of poetry as far as I know, but it has been quite popular lately here in Finland (online mainly) and I was taught how to make one at school.
Originally these have been done on newspapers, but online news are fine aswell.
The idea is to pick up a piece of news and edit a poem out of it. You're not allowed to add any words, not allowed to rearrange them either. What you have to do is remove words and sentences and leave the ones that'll make up a poem. You can also remove parts from words, but only from the beginning and ending; see for example "the police said" could be "he ice aid" [(t)he (pol)ice (s)aid] but NOT "tea pole sad" [t(h)eA pol(ic)e sa(i)d] since you're not allowed to add any words or letters or remove stuff from the middle.
When starting out, you should read through the piece you're editing and see what kind of vocabulary it has in it and then just start editing.
If you go the "original" way, the unwanted parts are removed from the piece of news in the newspaper with a black marker. It's always wise to do the first version with a pencil though, because with a marker you can't undo things.
You're freely allowed to choose the structure of your poem and on which lines and to which verses you want the words to go.
I'll make up an example now:
the piece of news (all made up ): "The police were told that a thief stole the jewellery and escaped with a car. The thief broke the window of a jewellery shop and stole the jewellery. If you have clues about this case call to 007790"
Poem 1: The police were a thief and broke you
Poem 2: The ice The jewellery The thief Of a jewellery jewellery this
Poem 3: The police escaped the thief shop And stole the jewellery you have
Well these are really ridiculous examples, but I'm basically trying to prove you that you can get very different results and that you can combine words from different sentences to make up something totally new! This is not stealing in any way, this is just combining words, and this is art what you create.
This poem type is perfect if you don't know what to write, have writer's block, are bored or just want to try something new. The result poems tend to be quite artistic and strange and usually have strange methaphors in them, so if you like it the traditional way with rhymes and such this might not be the thing for you however.
If you want to do these poems on mobile devices/ computers/ from online news, you can remove parts by using [ ], ( ) or { } for example. Then when you're done, rewrite the poem and remove everything that's not needed, but leave the version with ( [ { around though.
Once the poem is done you can make up the name all by yourself!
If anyone around here is interested in trying this kind of poetry I'd love to see what you come up with So maybe we could use #newspoem for these and if you want me to see the poem you can tag me in the comments with @Limea
Also if you post news poems here it would be nice if you included the original piece of news / edited one with ( [ { for others to see, or atleast a link to the source.
Here's one proper example for those of you who have had the interest to read this far!
source: http://mobile.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-21810389 ------------------- (poem name) "Explosion"
Atleast people died and were hurt exploded Villagers had been accidentally sent to the hospital "My God is a tragedy," said the Bishop who was the explosion
--------------------
Original with ( )
At least (12) people died and (dozens more) were hurt( when a small lorry loaded with fireworks) exploded (in a small village in central Mexico.
The blast happened during a religious celebration in Jesus Tepactepec, a village in Tlaxcala state.)
Villagers had been (taking part in a procession when a firework) accidentally (landed on the vehicle, reports say.)
(Fourteen ambulances, a mobile medical unit and two air ambulances were) sent to the (village to treat the wounded.)
(Many of the injured were taken to )hospital( in neighbouring Puebla state.)
"My God(, this) is a tragedy," said the Bishop (of Tlaxcala, Francisco Moreno,) who was( at the scene of) the explosion.
(The state governor, Mariano Gonzalez, ordered all hospitals in the region to treat the victims of the explosion.
"People were taking part in a religious procession in Jesus Tepactepec when a rocket landed on a truck carrying a large quantity of fireworks," said the civil protection director for Tlaxcala state, Jose Mateo Morales.
He said the number of victims could increase, as the street was full of people making preparations for the celebration of the village's patron saint, Jesusito.)
Guide to: News-poems • Opuss № I