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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

NaPoWriMo Day 16: A Weird Assignment

Today's prompt is to take a foreign language poem from a site of poems in other languages, and try taking the shapes and sounds of the words in that language, to write something with similar shapes and sounds in English, regardless of whether it matches the meaning of the original, or even makes sense.  I chose, at random, a verse from a longer poem  in French, which I do not know, by Tunisian poet Amina Saïd:

excerpt from A. Said's "We live in a country 'previous"

nous vivons dans un pays
ivre de violence et de guerre
Medellin sombrera dans la tristesse
dès votre départ nous resterons là
à attendre la lumière simplement
vous remercier d’être venus


(My New Title:)  "After All That"

Noose vivid as dance and pays
every day violence and day gorilla...Ah,
Maid Ellen, some beer and dance la-te-stress.
These voters depart noose restaurant's lay:
ah attention lay luminously simply meant,
voice re-mercy-er, day tray, vain noose.
                                          -----------------

(Huh.  As poetry, it's more like heinous. S.F.)

2 comments:

  1. I didn't even try this one. Good on you for doing it! Well done too : )
    Lynn

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  2. Thanks...I just came here to tweak the language one a little more...Real curious assignment, but I feel good that it can almost make sense, and sounds 'professional.' (haha)

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