Skip to main content

Objects And Memories -Poetry Ideas


Do objects have memories?

A blanket ?
A soft toy ?
A pair shoes ?
A ball ?
A book ?
A house ?
A table ?
A piece of jewelry ?
An item of clothing ?


Patricia Mc Kissack believes they do. Check out her poem, 'Remembering'

Mama told me
Cloth has memory
I hope the black corduroy remembers
That it was once the pants
My uncle wore to vote for the first time, all
clean and new
I hope the pink and green flowered table cloth remembers the peach
cobbler I spilled on the fourth of July picnic
Before my brother went off to school in Boston
When we were still
All together
I hope the blue work shirt remembers
How hard Daddy worked…
All his life
If by chance the cloth forgets
I want to always remember
All of it.


Make a list of things in your life you hope have a memory.
Share your list and talk about the moments/ memories you connect to your objects.

Here is my poem, taking my inspiration from Patricia McKissack's poem.

REMEMORIES

I hope my thongs remember the time one of
them floated away down the creek
And I had to hop home
I hope my old black raincoat remembers
how hard I looked for it when it was taken
from the Prep coat-pegs
I hope my favourite jeans remember how I
wore them until they were so thin they split
I hope they remember…
Because I sure do
Alan Wright

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Poetry Inspired by Images and Objects

There are many ways pictures and photographs can be conscripted to support the writing of poetry. Allow me to share a few ideas with you: Old photographs are a great source of inspiration. Cynthia Rylant explored this idea with great success in her book 'Something Permanent' where she employed the Depression era photographs of Walker Evans to add a new voice to the starkness to the lives of people experienced under extreme circumstances. I have used this strategy to spark many individual poems. In ' I Bet There's No Broccoli On The Moon,' I used a photo I had taken in 2004 while living in New York to inspire a poem. The poem was based on a story related by a friend who grew up in New York.  I regularly combined poetry and pictures in my writer's notebook, drawing on inspiration from the photograph and my personal memories. We can also utilize existing cartoons and illustrations to create ekphrastic poems. I frequently use the illustrations of Jim Pavlidis to co

Opposite Poems

O pp o s ite P oem s In his book, ' How To Write Poetry,'  Paul Janeczko presents the idea of opposite poems. Paul suggests they could also be referred to as antonym poems. This is wordplay and it's fun to try. Here are some examples Paul provides to help us see very clearly how these short little poems work. I think the opposite of chair Is sitting down with nothing there What is the opposite of kind? A goat that butts you from behind Paul Janeczko You will  notice the poems are written in rhyming couplets. They can be extended so long as you remember to write in couplets. Paul shows us how this is done. What is the opposite of new? Stale gum that's hard to chew A hot-dog roll as hard as rock Or a soiled and smelly forgotten sock You might notice that some of Paul's opposite Poems begin with a question. The remainder of the poem answer the question posed. Opposite poems are a challenge, but it is a challenge worth trying. Not e

Powerful Poetry, 'Refugees' by Brian Bilston

  This week, Poetry Friday is hosted by Janice Scully  @ Salt City Verse where Janice shares some original words and offers us a taste of Thomas Carlyle to ponder. I encourage you to join a host of poets from all around the globe and visit Janice's page... Almost two years to the day, I wrote a post featuring the poem 'Refugees' by Brian Bilston. The poem was included in Brian's first book of poetry, 'You Took The Last Bus Home.' A very powerful Reverso poem and technically brilliant.  A Reverso poem can be read from top to bottom or bottom to top. It will often express opposite opinions depending on which way you read it. Such poems really make us think. A Reverso poem is like a picture turned upside down, a frowning face upended to reveal a smiling one. The poem read in reverse, contradicts itself with an opposing message. In 'Refugee' Brian Bilston focuses on a societal issue that tends to polarize feelings and the opposing views are clearly in eviden