Chickens

Years ago, when I worked in an infant school, I was given the task of drawing a large chicken which was to be the centrepiece of a class project and would fill a classroom wall. I may have skills, but freestyle drawing is not one of them and I mumbled such to the teacher, who was very lovely and kind, but spoke to me like I was another of her 4 and 5 year old pupils and suggested that I try my best and might surprise myself. Hilarious, Miss! 

With good grace, and for the sake of the class who were going to make eggs, chicks, wheat and bread to be part of the wall covering, I accepted the challenge. It was difficult but my end result was acceptable in so far as it looked like a chicken, if only through the eyes of a child, and with the work of the class added to it, the scene looked like a fabulous reproduction of the story, The Little Red Hen. 

For anyone who doesn’t know, the hen lives on a farm with other animals. She looks upon these animals as friends. When she finds a grain of wheat and decides to grow it to eventually make bread, she asks for the help of her friends. All refuse. She plants the grain, looks after it, harvests the crop and every step of the progress she asks for help and doesn’t get any. The wheat is milled into flour and she makes bread. The others all want to eat some, but the little red hen refuses to share. She eats it herself with her own chicks. Through the story, the aim was for children learn about sharing tasks, being fair, being helpful and working together. The collage remained on that classroom wall all term. The Little Red Hen, my ‘wonderful’ artwork, for all to admire. Long gone.

Why are cowards or anyone refusing a dare, called ‘chicken’? There is a lot to learn about the origins and some of it is fascinating, but to give a brief outline, chickens, usually called ‘hens’ were considered to be weak, timid creatures and completely the opposite of the male ‘cocks’ which were strong and fearless. Cocky, perhaps. And from Wikipedia, ‘According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest written instance of the word ‘chicken’ in the craven sense comes from William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, circa 1616. “Forthwith they fly, Chickens,” he wrote, describing soldiers fleeing a battlefield.’

Back to the world of childhood for my choice of poems, written by Jack Prelutsky, former U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate.

Last Night I Dreamed of Chickens

Last night I dreamed of chickens,
There were chickens everywhere,
They were standing on my stomach
They were nestling in my hair,
They were pecking at my pillow
They were hopping on my head,
They were ruffling up their feathers
As they raced about my bed.

They were on the chairs and tables,
They were on the chandeliers,
They were roosting in the corners
They were clucking in my ears,
There were chickens, chickens, chickens
For as far I could see…
When I woke up today I noticed
There were eggs on top of me.

                                Jack Prelutsky


Ballad of a Boneless Chicken

I’m a basic boneless chicken,
Yes, I have no bones inside,
I’m without a trace of rib cage,
Yet I hold myself with pride,
Other hens appear offended
By my total lack of bones,
They discuss me impolitely
In derogatory tones.

I am absolutely boneless,
I am boneless through and through,
I have neither neck nor thighbones,
And my back is boneless, too,
And I haven’t got a wishbone,
Not a bone within my breast,
So I rarely care to travel
From the comfort of my nest.

I have feathers fine and fluffy,
I have lovely little wings,
But I lack the superstructure
To support these splendid things.
Since a chicken finds it tricky
To parade on boneless legs,
I stick closely to the hen house,
Laying little scrambled eggs.

                                Jack Prelutsky

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Collage Poetry #1

Collage

The art of making a picture with various materials or objects…

stuck onto a larger surface.

Poetry

A piece of writing in which the words are arranged in separate lines,

often ending in rhyme, and are chosen for their sound and for the

images and ideas they suggest.

Considering these two definitions put forward by the Cambridge Dictionary, Collage Poetry to me is the art of making a piece of writing whereby words are cut out or made out of different material. These elements are then put together creating new images and meaning whilst considering visual shape and the symbolism of individual or a combination of words to evoke feeling and/or an idea. The symbols/text can be arranged on separate lines but not necessarily so.

Collage and writing poetry have both been part of my creative practice for many years. I have incorporated text into my assemblage and collage artworks i.e. from magazines and newspapers as a background. If I collage words to make a poem, I first write the poem then find words or letters that are appropriate. I’ve never created collage poetry in a somewhat random sense and thought this blog was an excellent opportunity to have a go.

I chose the BBC Wildlife Magazine, August 2006, for this exercise selecting a headline from 21 different pages.

I then chose the first word of each headline and started exploring creatively. I followed this by cutting out the last two words and had a bit of a play.

Finally I cut out all the words from the headlines and made attempts to create some writing that made some sort of sense. I didn’t put pressure on myself to use all the words. The first end result I believe was influenced by current tragic world events.

The second one turned out to be a bit of fun...

The third one, well, I'll leave that up to the reader:

I found the outcome really interesting and thought I'd have another go with the BBC Wildlife Magazine, July 2006. I carried on with the same process using 15 headlines this time.

My first attempt at making a poem yet again turned out to be seemingly influenced by events in Eastern Europe.

Since I used wildlife magazines and the given text, it's no surprise that nature-themed poems were also an outcome. 

Finally, I collected all the leftover words from both headlines, separated them out and categorised them by nouns, verbs, adverbs etc. which led me down a Google rabbit hole and revisiting lessons in grammar rediscovering words like determiners (five types), conjunctions, articles amongst others. This mess of individual words taken out of their original context and the exercise of separating them out by function highlighted what role the words had to play in making meaning. It was helping to make sense of a giant puzzle. The cut out words both inspired and directed ideas, whilst my past experience and intuition played a part in selecting, grouping and assembling. During the process the lack of certain words available also affected how the poems were constructed.

Here are the final results.

Just like fitting in that last piece to complete a challenging jigsaw, producing these poems has been very satisfying.

Thank you for reading. KEW 😀

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Uncreative Writing

Guest post by David Riley

Below is something I made using one of the free word shuffling programs that can be found on the web and a couple of entries from recent Blackpool Gazettes, an idea suggested to me when I read about Kenneth Goldsmith, who had created a piece of work out of the whole day's content from one New York Times paper. This isn't found poetry or even collage but possibly related to it. I haven't moved things around so it's still alphabetical. There's scope here for finding new meanings, isn't there? Something worth trying perhaps?

3am argue blackpool blackpools cash chair class come cost council day deckchair deckchairs emro end forward gazette go golden happen id including just mile modern move need new other place police process prom pub resort say seaside seem shame sight spent stock talk time town visitor vital working year

Indeed, in the 21st c., it is difficult to find poetry that does not have some “found” component, the ne plus ultra exemplified by Kenneth Goldsmith’s Day (2003), which is the transcription of the entire text of a single day’s— September 1, 2000— New York Times from beginning to end, consolidating headlines, columns, and ads, so as to make one seamless and surprisingly novel text. Goldsmith himself calls such works “uncreative writing.” His New York Trilogy of 2003– 5 (Weather; Traffic; and Sports) is entirely found text: its transcription of the specific radio broadcasts in a given time period does not include a single word that the poet can call his own.   (The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (2012), Princeton University Press, Kindle Edition)

 

Goldsmith's thoughts on 'uncreativity' are expanded in his interview, Uncreativity as Creative Practice.

Happy 1000th. Here's to another millennium.

 

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