Playing with Poetry Snowballs

Happy Poetry Friday! Today, I kick off a new series on the topic of PLAY and share a related poem. It's also the last day of our current giveaway, so if you haven't entered yet, be sure to check out the link at the end of this post.

When we TeachingAuthors were discussing our next topic, April Halprin Wayland suggested "something light, such as, how we each play with words." The idea felt perfect, especially because I'd recently read the following Tweet from Nir Eyal:

 Personally, I have been doing a lot of playing lately--with poetry!

Photo by Jasmin Schreiber on Unsplash

 
Back in December of 2020, I'd shared:

"one of the things I'm looking forward to in 2021 is becoming even more steeped in poetry, both reading and writing it."

I'm happy to say that I followed through on that intention. I've been not only reading and writing more poetry, but submitting it for publication, too. I'm thrilled to announce that several of my poems have been accepted and will be coming out in two new anthologies. I can't share the details yet, but will provide them when I'm able. 

One way that I've been playing with poetry is by writing in new-to-me forms, particularly math-based ones, such as pi-ku, Fib poems, and Etherees. I recently learned about snowball poems, developed by the OULIPO. If you aren't familiar with the organization, here's a description of OULIPO from Poets.org:

"Although poetry and mathematics often seem to be incompatible areas of study, the philosophy of OULIPO seeks to connect them. Founded in 1960 by French mathematician Francois de Lionnais and writer Raymond Queneau, Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle (OULIPO), or Workshop of Potential Literature, investigates the possibilities of verse written under a system of structural constraints. Lionnais and Quenuau believed in the profound potential of a poem produced within a framework or formula and that, if done in a playful posture, the outcomes could be endless."

While writing my first snowball, or boule de neige, as the OULIPO call it, I definitely tried to keep a "playful posture." Here's what I came up with:

Background photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

This snowball poem is an example of one that grows, which is called a boule de neige de longueur. Such poems should resemble a right triangle. The text I've quoted in my poem is taken from this page. There, you can read more about the various types and shapes of snowball poems.

As I worked on this poem, I realized I have written snowballs before, in the form of nonets and Etherees. So technically, this isn't really my first snowball poem, though it's the first containing twelve lines. 😀

I'm wondering how many of you are familiar with snowball poems. Have you ever written one? Do let me know in the comments. I also wonder: Is there a name for a poem that describes the form it's written in? I think there should be.

You can check out more poetry at this week's Poetry Friday roundup hosted by Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core. Before heading over there, though, don't forget to enter our current giveaway if you haven't already done so. Details are at the end of Esther's Student Success Story interview with Gwen Neiman Levy about the release of her debut picture book, What the Cluck?

Happy writing!
Carmela