In this episode, Fable and the Verbivore go out on a writing limb and venture into the assignment of taking in and then recreating a poem from memory. Embracing the vulnerability of creating outside our comfort zone, we share our words in the form of poetry.

Though the idea of imitating other writers to help find your voice is not new, this specific exercise required some pushing out of our creative boundaries. The structural freedom and no holds barred nature of poetry made for an invigorating writing experience, while reading our work out loud tapped into feelings of exposure and finding the courage to share our stripped down voice.

We would highly recommend this practice as a way to continue the journey of finding your own voice and analyze what resonates with you as part of a given work of writing. If you would like to join us in this exercise, we would love to hear what ideas and words you create. The hashtag we are using on Instagram is #imitatelikeawriter.

Into the woods,
Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Fable states that she believes the idea for the exercise of reading a poem and then attempting to recreate the work from memory came from Mary Oliver. This is correct, and the recommendation came from her book The Poetry Handbook.

Fable uses poetry from Anis Mojgani’s book In The Pockets of Small Gods as inspiration for the style behind her second poem.

The Verbivore references a sentence from Naomi Novik’s Uprooted where all the words worked together to support an overarching feeling of solitude and emotional isolation. Here is that quote:

“The bed was small and narrow, canopied and curtained in with red velvet; a single chair stood before the fireplace, beautifully carved, alone; a single book on the small table beside it with a single cup of wine, half-drunk”.

The Verbivore mentions Jasper Fforde as a favorite (and absurdist) author that she may want to try to emulate in a future Prose imitation excercise. If you have not yet had a chance to read this author and would like to, The Eyre Affair is a good representation of his unique style and borrows from Jane Eyre with entertaining results.

Poems mentioned:

Today by Mary Oliver

The Lady of Shalott by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The Red Wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams

Books mentioned:

A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver

Light Filters In: Poems by Caroline Kaufman

A Thousand Mornings by Mary Oliver

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

In The Pockets of Small Gods by Anis Mojgani

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)