Grammatically Ungrammatical

Jennifer Guyor Jowett lives in the mitten state where she’s taught Literature and English for over thirty years. She is the creator of the DogEaredBookAwards, the author of a middle grade historical fiction Into the Shadows, and her poems can be seen stitched into Findlings. Jennifer is a frequent 5 Day Open Write and #verselove participant and host.

Inspiration

A recent writing conversation between a student and I led to our wondering what might happen if our grammatical rules suddenly didn’t apply to themselves. We tossed ideas around. We already verbify nouns, but what if nouns were verbs? What if colors described verbs, and adverbs modified nouns? The idea sat somewhere in my brain and would muck about on occasion. A recent exploration of the Poetry Foundation’s daily poems led me to discover Sherwin Bitsui, a Dine´ of the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. His poem River began, “When we river” and the idea of noun as a verb leapt into my brain once more, and the mucking began anew.

Process

Play with grammar. Change nouns to verbs. Change verbs to nouns. Use adjectives to describe verbs. You might begin with Bitsui’s line “When we… and add a noun. I found it worked to start with a couple of ungrammatical lines and add a few lines to ground the reader before playing more. Turn the rules on their heads. It’s ok. Really.

Jennifer’s Poem

When we highway
between birth and end,
our yellow moving,
blue moving, red moving,
our days minutes
our weeks days
in constantly motion,
month upon month
as years grow and pass,
a black crow in the fields of corn,
blinking our reflection,
there and gone,
heads a tilt,
wonders what he saw

Your Turn

Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own poem. (This is a public space, so you may choose to use only your first name or initials depending on your privacy preferences.) Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. Also, please be sure to respond to at least three writers. Oh, and a note about drafting: Since we are writing in short bursts, we all understand (and even welcome) the typos and partial poems that remind us we are human and that writing is always becoming. If you’d like to invite other teachers to write with us, tell them to subscribe.