More Wordplay Wonder & Fun

Poets are frequently attracted to the notion of wordplay. It can be an irresistible force at times. I am happy to admit, I find wordplay compelling. I give into its call quite frequently. Furthermore, I never tire of its allure...
It also explains why I enjoy the poetry of Michael Rosen, Brian Bilston, Roger McGough, Shel Silverstein, Pam Ayres, Jack Prelutsky, Roger Stevens, Max Fatchen and Brian Moses. Elements of their poetry radiate with language contortions and a fair degree of fun and humour.

Brian Bilston employs wordplay masterfully in his book , 'You Took The Last Bus Home.'

Word play Defined
A witty or clever form of verbal expression, meant for fun and amusement. Commonly used in literature, poetry, and spoken word genres. It involves the exploitation of the meanings and ambiguities of words.
There are many forms of word play techniques, e.g., pun, spoonerism, slang, acrostic, euphemism, and oxymoron, just to name a few.
So, here are a couple of examples where wordplay is very much a guiding influence in the making of the poems.

Sizing Up Harriet

Harriet Smawl

Lived in the remote village of Large.

She developed a reputation

As a fortune-teller,

And soothsayer.

She was known

Far and wide,

As that Smawl medium from Large.

Alan j Wright.

Barefoot

Con Tessa

Stood on the headland

Surveying the beach.

The sea wore a welcoming look.

Con kicked off his Birkenstocks

And commenced to trudge

Across the sandy dunes.

In that instant he became,

-The barefoot Con Tessa.

Alan j Wright.

It is once again Poetry Friday and our host this week is Michelle Kogan who is celebrating Holidaze!

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...

Peter Dixon -Teabag Poem

Today I'm highlighting the poetry of Peter Dixon. Peter Dixon was not just a poet. He was a performer, educationalist and artist. He grew up in London during WW2, and as a boy his schooling was far from successful. He struggled with spelling and the understanding of word, form and grammar, so he tended to write secretly at home, drawing and writing of things largely ignored by schools. Despite this difficult phase of his life, Peter eventually became a school teacher and then a senior lecturer in education. It often mystified him as to how all of this came to pass. As a teacher, he strived to be unbiased and did not neglect the children who experienced learning challenges. Peter Dixon became a full time children’s writer and educational consultant. His first book was published in 1978. Whilst living in Winchester, Hampshire, with his family, he contributed to over 100 poetry anthologies and had seven collections of his own work published including Grow Your O...

Poetry Friday 'Storm On The Island' Seamus Heaney

Given the fact that we recently celebrated St Patrick's Day, it seems appropriate that I take this opportunity to continue the Irish focus and recognize one of Ireland's leading literary figures... Seamus Heaney was born in County Derry in Northern Ireland in 1939 and died in 2013. He became a multi award winning poet. His first collection of poems, 'Death of a Naturalist' appeared in 1966 and helped to establish Heaney as one of the major poets of the 20th century. From that first anthology, I have chosen 'Storm On The Island.' This poem tells us about the stoic resistance of people and structures to an incoming storm. The island is not named. Poetic scholars believe this is a poem that can be taken literally, as a monologue on the life and attitude of island people facing a storm, or it can be understood as a metaphor of political struggle on the island of Ireland. Heaney knew both worlds. The poems of this first collection are grounded in the soil...

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