Magnetic poetry

I've rediscovered the wonderful world of poetry again AND a small cure for the dreaded writers block.

I went to the puzzle shop yesterday and got some of that Magnetic Poetry that you can afix to the fridge door and get highly creative when you make your coffee. It's fantastic, you pull out a few words, make some random associations, tidy it up and pretty soon you have a poem. The above was done using their online version.

I had bought the "Genius" edition (on special 50% off....I'm such a tightwad) with words such as Kafkalesque, boor and erudite which are interesting words but make lousy poems......that was why it was on special methinks.

So, being curioius, I had a look at the Magnetic Poetry website to see what other kits they had available and some info on the guy who came up with the idea. I'm going to shoot down to the puzzle shop again and get the big standard edition, makes for better reading.

Whilst on their website, I was delighted to find some online poetry kits which you can see the results of above. Have a try and get creative. The subject matter is limited due to the limited number of words BUT what it does is gets you expressing ideas in other ways which aren't so automatic. You find creative solutions to problems given only a limited amount of resources.

The inspiration for the creation of the magnetic poetry was as follows:

It all started with a song and a sneeze. Dave Kapell, founder of Magnetic Poetry, was suffering from writer's block while trying to compose song lyrics. To overcome this problem, he wrote down interesting words on pieces of paper and rearranged them, looking for inspiration. What he hadn't figured into this experiment was his allergies. One good sneeze and any progress was sent flying across the room. Dave decided to glue the words to pieces of magnets and stick them to a pizza tin. Then he got hungry and the now magnetized words made their way to the refrigerator door. Before too long, Dave wasn't the only one rearranging his would-be song lyrics. When friends came over, Dave noticed they started to move the magnets around, amusing themselves by writing the first magnetic poems.

After seeing his friends having fun, Dave thought he might be able to sell his word kits at a local craft fair. He made up 100 kits and set up shop at Calhoun Square, a mall in the Uptown area of Minneapolis. All 100 kits were gone after 3 hours. That night, he recruited as many friends as pizza and beer could draw and made up more kits--all of which sold as rapidly the next day.

From these beginnings, Magnetic Poetry® has now sold over three million word kits, over one billion word tiles--growing from the Original Kit to a kid's line of kits, to foreign language kits, to Voice/theme kits

What's more David blogs, well kinda blogs. He puts down his views and impressions from his writing desk overlooking a train yard, no comments.