Day Eleven

Happy Friday, everyone, and happy eleventh day of National/Global Poetry Writing Month.

Our featured daily participant is aetherianessence, where the wordplay prompt for Day Nine imagines two of English’s most easily-mixed-up words jousting like knights.

Our resource for the day is the online collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, where you can find everything from a pair of bamboo-framed sunglasses to a very silly parody advertisement for talking toilet paper to a rococo coffee pot with a spout in the form of a rather gobsmacked sea-serpent.

And last but not least, today’s (optional) prompt. Take a look at Kyle Dargan’s “Diaspora: A Narcolepsy Hymn.” This poem is a loose villanelle that uses song lyrics as its repeating lines (loose because it doesn’t rhyme).  Your challenge is, like Dargan, to write a poem that incorporates song lyrics – ideally, incorporating them as opposing phrases or refrains. A few lyrics that might work, if you need inspiration:

“Is this the real life? / Is this just fantasy?”

“I read the news today, oh boy…”

“The world is a vampire…”

“At first I was afraid, I was petrified”

“There is a house in New Orleans”

“You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain”

“I went down down down and the flames went higher.”

“The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”

“Nothing ain’t nothing, but it’s free.”

And if you’re interested in learning more about villanelles, you can find some good information at the Poetry Foundation website.

Happy writing!