POETRY for Dummies

Anyone who lives in a rural part of the world may find themselves desperately wanting to recreate variety of activity that extends to more than conversations limited to what is going on the local soaps and rugby (echhhhh), fishing and taking in the not so pleasant aroma of the airborne stinkies generously supplied by the factories surrounding you. I used to love those free-style poetry nights, in dark little venues with beret wearing dreadlockers and angsty-I-wish-I-lived-in-8-mile types.

The TINCAN HANDMADE offering today is going to try and recreate that atmoshere in the comfort of your own dorpie (little town)house.

When I lived in Omura, I had an intensely arty,clever,creative friend called Kristi Woo, who had a set of Fridge Poetry magnets - I admit that I probably drove her insane cos I loved these things and would go over to visit and spend a large part of the time rearranging the words to pretend I was a poet. I got thinking about that again and decided that I wanted some - so off I went to our one mall convincing myself that atleast one of the stores on the two storied, 2 block long mall should have some. Nope, the best I could find were "Go Sharks" or "Go Springbok" (rugby magnets - echhhhhhhh).

Demoralised I returned to my house. I think it may have been the stinky fumes from Mondi's latest experiment in Stinkobility that sort of induced a Peyote type vision. I was given the idea to create a set of Fridge Poetry Magnets. Here is how the project went.

Well the first thing I needed to do was find some magnet paper - I happened to have some (DAISO PLAZA 100Yen Store) that I with great foresight had seen fit to bring with me when I moved from Japan - yes there were people who looked at me strange when upon unpacking produced my magnet paper, but they are all looking at me with envy now (insert MUHAHAHAHHAHA audio track here)! But I did some research online here and there is a company here called Tecnical + General Distributors who will sell you magnet paper in printable A4 sized sheets - and the best part is, you can buy it per sheet!.

Right, so I have the magnet paper and now I need words, lots of them - yes I do suffer from verbal diarrhea, but at this point I had an acute attack of DUH. So I searched for the most used/popular words, verbs and the most beautiful words in the English language and was rewarded by lists of these which I merely copied and pasted into a table in MSWord.

I printed the list and then glued it onto the magnet paper (messy, finicky enterprise as I stupidly used liquid bond instead of regular Pritt.) Then came the laborious process of cutting out each individual word - the magnet paper was too thick to be cut on my lightweight cutter. Well the end result was a success and I now have a very poetic fridge. To recreate the effect of the dark poetry lounge - merely turn your super-bright kitchen light off, light a few candles and recite your poetry to your plates and cups!