Dedication

DEDICATION

To RKS
you were my first
you could have been my last
you are my lost

And to YHWH
You are my first
You are my last
I'm no longer lost
Isaiah 61:1-3
"...beauty for ashes..."

- Mildred Achoch, 4th September, 2011

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A big thank you to David Citino and his amazing, inspirational book "Paperwork", for reminding me that poems - and poets - are worth something.

Many thanks to my namesake "Mimi" Mik for taking the time to read my crazy poems, and for giving me her invaluable feedback. You rock!

Asante sana to Murfy's Flaw for being one of the coolest and 'down-to-earthest' Kenyan rock bands! And for allowing their awesome song "In Silence" to be part of the soundtrack of this book of poems.

I salute the prolific poet Phatalvision for reading ALL my poems! By the way sir, "old school" is "gold 'n' cool" :-)

I am very thankful to my mum, dad and sister, for putting up with me all these years. I love you!

Thursday, April 10, 2014

OULIPOST #10: Twitter dispatch appearing

Every day this April, nearly 80 poets will write one poem per day by applying constrained writing techniques sourced from the Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle — or “workshop of potential literature”) group to text sourced from their daily local newspaper. This is the tenth of thirty prompts in the Oulipost project.

The found poem below is in response to this prompt:

 OULIPOST #10: SNOWBALL

This procedure requires the first word of a text to have only one letter, the second two, the third three, and so on as far as resourcefulness and inspiration allow. The first word of a snowball is normally a vowel: in English, a I or O.

From your newspaper, select a starting vowel and then continue adding words of increasing length from the same source article or passage. Challenge yourself further by only using words in order as you encounter them in the text.

A 23 had aged
After health stopped.
Twitter dispatch appearing.

 of the body flown burial,
Zeituni: homeland limelight.
Twitter dispatch appearing.

 Luo body moved former
Twitter visiting President.
Twitter dispatch appearing.

 REFERENCES

 Nation Correspondent. "Woman jailed for dumping baby on railway." The Daily Nation. 10 Apr. 2014. pg 6.
Nation Team. "Family wants Obama aunt flown home for burial." The Daily Nation. 10 Apr. 2014. pg 1 and 6.
Nation Reporter. "Ruto on Twitter today for Jubilee 1-year review." The Daily Nation. 10 Apr. 2014. pg. 2.


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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 10, 2014 at 7:16 AM

    I like that yours is in stanzas. My imagination lacked that artistry; I'm all lineal and that.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MargoApril 10, 2014 at 9:42 AM

    I hoped someone would create stanzas. It's interesting how different the effect is. Even knowing the form, I had to peer and count to tell my brain that this snowballs. I'm still snowing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. kenyarockfilmfestivaljournalApril 10, 2014 at 9:55 AM

    I broke the rules a bit. In my defence, it never snows in Kenya :-)

    ReplyDelete

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