The Lalapalouza Exercise

The Lalapalouza Exercise

                        Lalapalouza: an extraordinary thing or event (also a music festival)

1) Write down a dream, or a waking dream, if you can remember one

2) Describe a tool or a kitchen implement.

3) Write an early childhood memory

4) Make a list of ten things you did today, in order of doing them

5) Write a forbidden thought, as if to someone who would understand.

6) Write a forbidden thought, as if to someone who would not understand.

7) Write down three colors.

8) Write down four evocative or favorite words

9) Make a list of five things you’ve seen today, then choose two and describe them in some detail.  They can be things in this room.

10) Physically describe briefly a person who comes to mind.

11) Write down three direct rhymes.  Moon/June is a direct rhyme.

12) Write down three slant rhymes: moon/mine; long/thing are slant rhymes.

13) Write three things people have said to you in the last 48 hours. They can be short. Quote them as closely as you can, and describe one physical gesture each person made.

14) Remember a time of day.  How visually do you know what time of day that was? Describe.

15) Write the last extreme pain you had, emotional or physical.

16) If the pain was an animal, what animal would it be?  Describe the animal.

17) On a separate sheet of paper, make up and write down the first line of a poem.  Fold the paper and give to me.

 LalaPaloozah Exercise: Writing the Poem

What you have just done is to generate a lot of material and feeling for a poem or poems.

Using any or all of the line you have just been given as the first line or any line of the poem, and any part of or all of the material you have just generated in or out of context, in any way you want, write a poem of between twenty and thirty lines or more with lines of 7, 9. 13, or 19 syllables in any combination, and a few rhymes, either slant or direct.

Allow the material to determine the poem. Allow the material to teach you something new about how you might write a poem.  Do not force an idea, plot or particular sort of language on the material.  Allow its music and sense to speak to you.