Magnetic Poetry

It's amazing how uncovering a box full of old keepsakes can stimulate creativity and new ideas to emerge. A few weeks ago, I discovered an old ziplock bag in a box of writing material I had kept over the past year. In the bag were these little white rectangles- magnets of all sizes. But what is so unique about these magnets is that they each have a word written on them- "morning", "shadow", "give", "dance", "rain", and "imagine" are just a few of the words that spilled out of the bag once I opened it.

I had forgotten about those magnetic words for awhile now. But once they found their way onto the fridge, I couldn't resist playing around with them, forming images, painting my own worlds with those words.

Against the raven black background of the fridge, the white rectangles look magical, swarming around to come together in what seems at first to be random formations.

But now that surface of the fridge houses poems that when I step back and look at them, seem anything but random. Their ideas appear to have been put together by my subconcious, linking words that I liked together until an overall message, that I didn't even know I was telling (or that I needed to hear), is just revealed right in front of me.

The poems are built as I'm warming up the kettle, waiting for my eggs to scramble, or simply passing through the kitchen. There is something so inviting and irrisistible about the words. They draw me in to create, explore and wonder at the power of words.

Poem #1: Always Changing

life so full of rich surprise-s
loud storm-s & then gentle laugh-er
I like how we are always change -ing.


Poem #2: No Thoughts

must
swallow thought
and feel.
fall hard.
never ask why or wait.
be lost,
do give,
chase blue water,
like work-ing day-s
but love the dark night.

Poem #3: Special Vacation

dance beneath the moon
wander round cloud-s
sleep through cold
lie in his shade
let her rise out of you
for this is a sky holiday.


Poem #4: Write

Write
swarms
to
incubate
our
shiver-y
time
and
bring
a-live
present
occasion.

(Note: Capitals and punctuation have been used loosely here as I am trying to capture the real poem appears on the magnets. The dashes represent the break from one magnet piece to another. Sometimes, I had to improvise to get the word or word form that I wanted, so any ungrammatical or misspelled words are used that way on purpose).

Where can you get your own magnetic poetry words?- Try Chapters or Indigo. They have boxes of them on different themes. I got mine a few years ago from a magnetic poetry calendar at the Book Warehouse.

You could even cut out words from magazines, collect them, and paste them down on a surface to create your own poetry word collage, ransom note style!