You Are Invited: Exquisite Corpse Poetry

Posted on by evelyn

Hello friends!

I recently was introduced to the poetry game called The Exquisite Corpse. The basic idea is to form a collaborative poem that is written by multiple people without any idea what the previous lines hold or say.

I have played the drawing version, in which players fold pieces of paper and sketch horrors of heads with stick bodies and dinosaur legs. I have even participated in a very similar game where the concept only differs slightly through the rule that the participants are allowed to see the single preceding line of the poem and work from there. It wasn’t until most recently that I heard of this version in which the participants see absolutely no other lines and merely contribute theirs.

So I thought it would be fun to try this together. I know many of my readers are poets themselves, and even if you aren’t, then please join in! The more the merrier.

Here are the rules:

  1. No objectionable content: profanity, slurs, gore, etc., or any political stances/comments/jabs. In order to enforce this rule, understand that I reserve the right to exclude lines that break that standard.
  2. Everyone only contributes one line. The common element that will unify the poem is that each line will be six words long. Beyond that, you have creative liberty. (While of course keeping rule one in mind. 😉 )
  3. I, as the mediator, will assemble the lines in the order I receive them and then publish the end result a week from today.
  4. When submitting, you may refrain from sharing your name if you would like. In the end the poem will be published in a post as a whole piece anonymously for everyone to enjoy!

(I thought about adding the rule: have fun. But I didn’t want to be THAT person. So have fun or don’t. It’s your choice.)

Now, dear I-am-not-a-poet*: everyone is invited. Don’t sell yourself short! It’s just one small line. It’s a lot of fun to play around with, a good exercise at writing, and the result will be fascinating! (as well as anonymous)

Plus, it’s a little adventure, and how can you, dear friend, so no to an adventure?

Fashion your six word line and submit it below. I can’t wait to read the end result.

Cheers!

*I may or may not have had particular people in mind when I said that. 😉

(Edit 6/12/2020: I’m sorry but this form is now closed, to see the resulting poem, go here!)

Published by evelyn

heyo! my name is evelyn and i like things like stories, people, elephants, hot tea, chocolate, dancing in the rain and reading poetry out loud in the dark and also driving with the windows down and music up. i name my plants weird names.

25 thoughts on “You Are Invited: Exquisite Corpse Poetry”

  8. Ooh, fun! I used to think that I didn’t like poetry (*clicks tongue disapprovingly at my past self*), but NO MORE! I did a simple poetry course for school this past year, and I loved it. Can’t wait to see the result! 😀

    Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s