Compose a new poem from your favorite lines of Orlando White’s Bone Light. Do not add any language. You can choose to make sense or not make sense, to sound like White or to sound like Asian, to be narrative or fragmentary. See what you can say using his words. (100 words)
Part 2:
Let yourself be inspired by Bone Light and by Orlando White’s approach to language.
There are two stages to this experiment:
Stage 1:
- Write down instructions for a process you know very well. (like you know how to cook, or how to take care dog)
- Make the process a metaphor* for something else. [If the term metaphor is unfamiliar, google for a definition]. Essentially, write instructions that tell us what to do, but write them in such a way that you could be talking about something else something deeper.
- Reduce the language of your instructions to the bone minimum. Don’t worry if we can’t follow them. (250 words)
Stage2:
- Choose a letter of the alphabet, either because it is meaningful to you or at random.
- Stare at it for 10 minutes.
- Write down ideas about the letter: its shape, its inner life, its story. (80 words)
- Using the letter as a character, write a poem in which the letter follows your instructions. (120 words)
