Poetic Form Of The Month
Each month, World Poetry Open Mic explores a new poetic form, inviting poets to expand their abilities by both writing and then sharing their work.
Each month, World Poetry Open Mic explores a new poetic form, inviting poets to expand their abilities by both writing and then sharing their work.
August 2020
This month's form is:
Abstract
Abstract is a term used to describe poetry where the aural quality is of equal or greater importance than the meaning.
Form
Abstract poetry is not a prescribed form. There are no rules to adhere to. Instead, the onus is on moving beyond words to create something within the context of writing and performing that uses those mediums as tools but is not bound by them.
In many ways, abstract poetry is akin to Avant Garde musical composition—musical notations that seek to move away from conventional musical theory.
An aspiring writer of abstract poetry may wish to record themselves attempting to make a sound no one has ever made before, inventing new words or cutting out letters from magazines and arranging them randomly and reciting the resulting chaos.
Use
To ascribe a purpose to abstract poetry seems to miss the purpose. With each new composition, the purpose is invented anew, thus one poem could be intend to recreate the sound of a dripping tap, to explore the mundanity of domestic life, while another may attempt to mimic cannons to illustrate the horrors of war, or to invent new words to describe the uniqueness of an individual’s experience of existence.
I would advise not simply making sounds for the sake of it, unless that itself is the acknowledged point. Consider the why, and then decide whether the experimentation has been successful at capturing that.
- Quoted from https://thanetwriters.com/essay/form/what-is-abstract-poetry/
Form
Abstract poetry is not a prescribed form. There are no rules to adhere to. Instead, the onus is on moving beyond words to create something within the context of writing and performing that uses those mediums as tools but is not bound by them.
In many ways, abstract poetry is akin to Avant Garde musical composition—musical notations that seek to move away from conventional musical theory.
An aspiring writer of abstract poetry may wish to record themselves attempting to make a sound no one has ever made before, inventing new words or cutting out letters from magazines and arranging them randomly and reciting the resulting chaos.
Use
To ascribe a purpose to abstract poetry seems to miss the purpose. With each new composition, the purpose is invented anew, thus one poem could be intend to recreate the sound of a dripping tap, to explore the mundanity of domestic life, while another may attempt to mimic cannons to illustrate the horrors of war, or to invent new words to describe the uniqueness of an individual’s experience of existence.
I would advise not simply making sounds for the sake of it, unless that itself is the acknowledged point. Consider the why, and then decide whether the experimentation has been successful at capturing that.
- Quoted from https://thanetwriters.com/essay/form/what-is-abstract-poetry/