I too love these exercises - but I'm not confident enough to think them up for myself every week. I need someone (Emma, I'm looking at you!) to give me a weekly prompt along the lines of "spend 30 mins this week doing this exercise"... a service for your Substack paying subscribers?? I would say this, cos I'm trying to persuade you to do it (!), but I bet there'd be a fair chance of gaining more subscribers this way? #hopeful :)
Ooh, that's an interesting idea - thank you, @RachelDavidsonAuthor ! I'm not sure I could think up a new one every week in perpetuity either, but it's definitely something to put on the Possible Things for Substack list, once this term at Goldsmiths is wrapped!
These are fantastic exercises! I especially love clustering, which I've never tried. Have you ever read Raymond Queneau’s "Exercises in Style" in which he tells the same anecdote in 99 different ways (in metaphors, as a sonnet, in the passive tense, etc)? Seems like a book you'd like -
Clustering is so good. I didn't know it, till I was teaching CW for the Open University, and there it was in the first Poetry week of the course. And I do know the Queneau - it's HUGE fun, as well as thought-provoking. I've always been tempted to try to do one for myself ... A lot of those Oulipo games are really good exercises.
I too love these exercises - but I'm not confident enough to think them up for myself every week. I need someone (Emma, I'm looking at you!) to give me a weekly prompt along the lines of "spend 30 mins this week doing this exercise"... a service for your Substack paying subscribers?? I would say this, cos I'm trying to persuade you to do it (!), but I bet there'd be a fair chance of gaining more subscribers this way? #hopeful :)
Ooh, that's an interesting idea - thank you, @RachelDavidsonAuthor ! I'm not sure I could think up a new one every week in perpetuity either, but it's definitely something to put on the Possible Things for Substack list, once this term at Goldsmiths is wrapped!
These are fantastic exercises! I especially love clustering, which I've never tried. Have you ever read Raymond Queneau’s "Exercises in Style" in which he tells the same anecdote in 99 different ways (in metaphors, as a sonnet, in the passive tense, etc)? Seems like a book you'd like -
Clustering is so good. I didn't know it, till I was teaching CW for the Open University, and there it was in the first Poetry week of the course. And I do know the Queneau - it's HUGE fun, as well as thought-provoking. I've always been tempted to try to do one for myself ... A lot of those Oulipo games are really good exercises.