...Is on this found poem I wrote in 2008. It was the first found poem I'd ever written and I really enjoyed playing with the words from the book On Writing Hits Songs, which I never would have otherwise picked up. (The challenge set by my former poetry group was to choose a book on something you didn't know about to write your found poem). I'm very pleased to say that this piece of found poetry has finally found its home within the pages of Takahe 75 (Issue 1, 2012).
One
place a good song doesn’t come from is the brain
By
Kirsten Cliff
Your
hit song needs a tune:
geek
rock, pure pop, short-back-and-sides
teenage
craze, cocaine cool, extra firepower
primitive
blues, cultural cringe, glam-rock chic
scurried
around the stage like nervous kittens
It
needs a rhythm:
spiky,
rock and roll, one-man jukebox
piss-take,
half-baked, shoe-gazing outsider
irony,
heavy-handed, half send-up, half celebration
echoing
a police siren going past his house
It
needs a verse:
moptops,
British skiffle riff, too-clever-by-half songs
straightforward
popsmith, stream-of-consciousness
tap
into the hoon in us all
And
a chorus:
repetition,
repetition, repetition
short,
hit-filled, sound from another planet
wordplays
involving spooning under the moon
It
needs a title:
shrewd
musical operator
dislocate
all the styles, bundle them together
big
fat hit songs that the whole world wants to sing
And
it needs to sound as if it’s about something:
whatever
works, perfection isn’t the point
Notes:
A found poem based on On
Writing Hit Songs by
Simon Morris (Wellington: Four Winds Press, 2003), from the Montana
Estates Essay Series edited by Lloyd Jones.
You can read another of my found poems here called "Receive Dreams as Messengers from Another Realm", which is the second longest title I've ever used for a poem! :)
