This month, I’m tagging along with Christie, Margaret, Jone, Mary Lee, and other writers to play with poetry for National Poetry Writing Month. I’ll be creating poems using haikubes, metaphor dice, magnet poetry, paint chips and anything else that catches my fancy.
Today was going to be a blackout poetry day, using my new Make Blackout Poetry book. Yes, a book with pages of interesting text you can Sharpie into poems. But nothing clicked. I started poem after poem only to abandon a line or two in because I couldn’t find one single poem in the whole darned book. I didn’t have any of my other poetry-making supplies with me this morning, but I did have my laptop, so I read paint chip colors at Benjamin Moore until I found a topic that I wanted to write about and then collected more paint colors until I had enough words to play with to make a poem. I added prepositions and articles. All other words and phrases are paint chip colors.
morning coffee
a glimmer of early dawn
in the cement grey
of a cityscape morning
solitude
tranquility
the mystic powers
of roasted coffee beans
the dirigible plum 
4 responses to “Paint Chip Poetry: Playing with Poetry #playingwithpoetryNPM 11/30”
The names of the paint chips are really gorgeous aren’t they. Both of your poems resonate with me as they laid that sacred brew.
I am so obsessed! Plus I really want to paint several rooms in my house now too.
Wonderful paint chip poem. I bought the Paint Chip Poetry game to use w/ my random sophomores and showed the class your poem as a mentor text. Your explanation offered a lovely grammar instruction moment, too. And the chips you chose are perfect for a coffee poem.
Tell me more about the game! Worth buying? I have a giant stack of paint chips from the hardware store, which I love, but of course I like the idea of an official game too! I couldn’t believe how many coffee words I found–even barista! I mean, what color is barista?? I think that’s going a little far.