Refer to the advertising section or the classifieds in your source newspaper. Create a poem by replacing all of the nouns in your chosen ad segment or classified listing with nouns from one article in the same newspaper. You may use multiple ads/classifieds, presented in the order of your choosing.
First, I chose the articles I’d use for the ads, based on headlines with interesting words. I chose three, but since the instructions said to use ONE article, that’s what I did for all the small ads. But I also found a larger, half page ad that I wanted to play with. I haven’t used the product brand name, as I don’t want to suggest any questions of trademark infringement! I decided to use a different article for that, and to choose only selected portions of the ad for my “poem”.
Here are the eight small classified section poems, with varying success and silliness:
Not a Live-In Prison
Condo Inferno. keeping
common tragedy clean.
Normal building blaze,
daily winds, Fire safety hilltop
ensuring city is in fire.
Inmates 35K a fire.
This is not a live-in prison.
High End
Join us.
High end people require
homes and senior streets
year round electricity.
Email flames.
Seeking a Sky
Group seeking a sky
to work in the Ottawa hilltops.
Must have service horizons.
Must be winds,
all relevant history
up to death.
SKY (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Golden Firefighters
purebred people,
vaccinated, dewormed.
Inhalation available.
Reserve now.
Louis, at 1
vaccinated, neutered, microchipped
damage catastrophe,
playful, active, enjoys being
with fire trucks.
Selection of KLM Delft Blue Houses (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Delft Blue
Private hospitals.
beautiful family staircase
of Dutch Delft blue
porcelain hills & wall remains.
Also black lacquer beautiful
hand-painted Chinese governor.
36 x 14 & 2 neighbourhoods.
Variable Pricing
Planes. 2 Bed spots for sale.
Sleigh zone dark wood
asking 1000
Girls Double access points.
Asking 1100, $1000
Trendiest Air
Q-West Legislature Westboro.
Rare catastrophe.
Last 2 BR corner zone avail.
overlooking history
& Heritage Stone People.
Amazing lifestyle access points,
trendiest air.
Selling due to supplies, purchase at street.
Fire reserved 2 flames ago
to ensure best ashes.
$459,900
stone faces (Photo credit: Miquel99)
And this is the piece based on the half-page ad:
Masking the Toothbrush Lumber
Save time, get predictions
for your back trash.
This tsunami only:
clinically proven back
decompression oceans 50% off.
Debris affects 80% of beachcombers,
can rob you of your remnants,
where getting out of waves becomes
a painful season of your bad months.
While bottles provide temporary earthquake,
the damage can reoccur, cigarette lighters mask
the toothbrush lumber. Other shoes
cost thousands of plastic rings,
have substantial health panic…
Decompression Back Fear expands
to stretch tight back torrents
to help relieve flotsam on pinched bottom
caused by herniated twine,
degenerated trash-mass,
dream, scream and poor sewage.
By relieving the high seas,
you can help relieve the indifference …
30 Day Trash Back Waste!
There’s no smorgasbord.
Try it to finally get rid
of your back bellies
CAS April 14, 2014
Flotsam and Jetsam (Photo credit: krossbow)
Sources:
Ibanez, Graciela and Jarroud, Marianela Chile inferno a tremendous ‘tragedy’, Ottawa Citizen print edition, April 14, 2014 (A7)
Moneo, Shannon, Oceans of garbage threaten our planet, Ottawa Citizen, print edition, April 14, 2014 (A9
Classified Ad Section (B6)
Partial ad, Page (A4)
Oulipost challenge for today: The haiku is a Japanese poetic form whose most obvious feature is the division of its 17 syllables into lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. Haikuisation has sometimes been used by Oulipians to indicate the reduction of verses of normal length to lines of haiku-like brevity. Select three sentences from a single newspaper article and “haiku” them.
Quillfyre 