It’s Friday! And you know what that means: Poetry! Want to know more about Poetry Friday? Click this link right here. And be sure to check out Tabatha Yeatts’ blog, The Opposite of Indifference, to see this week’s round up of wonderful poetry related posts, blogs and goodness.
Years ago, I ran across a story generator game that was kind of fun. It had a a few categories including genre, character and conflict and the idea was that you picked a random number and then wrote a story with the associated information. Many Facebook memes seem to riff off of this as well (Your Birth Month = X, Birth Date = Y, and Bingo! You have your Super Villian Name!)
So I decided to tweak this idea for my Winter Poetry Swap with Kathryn Apel and I came up with a warm up poetry game. I wanted to make it something that would be kind of silly, pretty quick to play, and hopefully fun.
I came up with three categories: POETRY FORM, TOPIC, and CHARACTER. The player would pull out three cards with 6 words on each, roll 3 dice, and then write a short poem based on the result. In total, I came up with 18 things (3 cards of 6) for each category, which gave Kathryn nearly 16 years worth of daily warm-ups if she did one different combo each day!
On one of the poems I wrote for Kathryn, I rolled “limerick”, “dying” and “toy.” I have a toddler in the house, and his grandparents seem to think that he should have all kinds of toys that require batteries and make lots of noise. This is what I came up with:
A toy with a voice cacophonic
Whirled ’round and around quite cyclonic
With its batteries low
It is starting to slow
And now its voice sounds so demonic
© Rebecca Herzog, 2018
I have compiled 3 lists below if you’d like to give the game a try. Don’t have any dice? Write the numbers 1-6 on strips of paper and draw them out of a bowl. I’d love to read the poems you come up with! Leave them in the comments, or drop a link to a blogpost. (Interesting tidbit–with just 6 words in each category, there are 216 different possible combos–that’s a poem a day from now until September 5th!)
POETRY FORM
1. Cherita
2. Haiku
3. Bio Poem
4. Acrostic
5. Dribble
6. Limerick
TOPIC
1. Winning
2. Dying
3. Travel
4. Season
5. Alone
6. Haunted
CHARACTER
1. A botanist
2. A door
3. A cafeteria
4. a toy
5. A slug
6. A geologist
Sloth Reads 
I’m so glad you left the instructions, because some people were asking, but then I fell down a hole with my #MoPoetry2019/InstaPoetry… and forgot to ask you if I could share it! But so much better that you do. 🙂 Now that I’ve navigated a month of InstaPoetry, I’m looking forward to jumping back into you game!
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*your 🙄
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Okay. Got my paper scridges and pen. Pulled out numbers (putting back the one I’d just extracted to be fair). Got 5, 2, 1. Looked up Dribble (thanks for the link – 100 letters, one rhyme). “Dying” always makes for an uplifting poem… and “botanist” grew some thoughts. So here goes:
Daisy’s droopy,
Lilies lie low,
Cactus cries,
Grapes won’t grow!
What’s the cure?
This I know:
Any good botanist
Should play piano!
by Donna JT Smith
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Donna, this is fantastic! Thanks for sharing.
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I AM sick today…I also forgot I wanted to say also how much I liked your “onic” rhymes! The slowed voice does get “demonic”! I could just hear it.
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Thanks, Donna! I hope you feel better!!
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Shoot…plant shoot, that is, not the dying kind….
I meant to leave this link:
https://sciencing.com/does-music-affect-plant-growth-4596442.html
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Those noisy toys! Sometimes I regret my dog’s noisy toys, and they don’t even have batteries.
Your game is cool! I am writing a peace poem every day in February and maybe I could use a peace-related variant of this when I run low on ideas.
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Will play! How fun.
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What a fun game! Seems like it would be easy enough to modify for kids’ writing. Instead of the forms, maybe:
write 3 stanzas, include a simile, use repetition, use personification, use one pair of rhyming words, use 15 words or less. Fun!
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Yes! That would be a great idea!
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So fun! I love making the writing a game. Makes it easier to get started and cuts the stress. Thanks for sharing this!
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Yes! Sometimes they arrest part for me is just starting to write, so things like this really help
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Fun to see how it works & what you wrote, Rebecca. Will try one to see what happens!
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Can’t wait to read what you come up with, Linda!
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I love the game you came up with Rebecca and your poem is spot on–I’d definitely like to try it, thanks!
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