tooth soup

photo credit: clyatt.jasper

This is why

Non-poets shouldn’t be allowed to write poetry, or at least shouldn’t be allowed to indulge in exercises such as National Poetry Writing Month. Because when they get bored of the monotony of trying to find words to describe all the stuff in their heads–but they still need to come up with something to fulfill their daily requirement–they just bugger the lot of it, all the history and all the forms, and invent something.

For this particular non-poet, it happened when Lou and I were messing around at university on our lunch break today. I had taken out a piece of paper just in case anything particularly momentous occured to me, and so that I could act like a pretentious twat in case anyone asked me what I had the paper and pen for (‘Oh, you know, poetry.’ *sniff and flick*). Nothing had hit, so I asked Lou to provide me with inspiration. Five minutes later, she suggested stuff that was under her bed, then that became big dust balls, then that became ‘Katamari Damacy’, and then since no-one had asked me what the paper was and thus I couldn’t sniff at anyone, we invented a new form.

Hence Katamari Poetry. It’s based on the ‘Katamari Damacy’ games in which, for the uninformed or non-gamer-geeky, you roll around a small sticky ball that picks up objects. As the ball gets bigger you can pick up more and more things until your ball becomes a star (don’t ask me, it’s a Japanese game).

So! The idea of Katamari Poetry is to create a big ol’ text ball of stuff you own. But! The challenge is to order them in some way. For example, you only include things you bought in the 90s, or you put things closer to the middle of the text ball, the more important it is to you. Which is what I’ve done here, with the world’s first Katamari poem! Feel free to write your own. I suggest doing it in Photoshop or something similar and making an image rather than dicking around with text spacings. That way you can rotate the words as well. Like I said, I’m no poet, so I’m sure someone can do a bit better than this first attempt. Have fun, and don’t laugh at the way me and the girl waste our afternoons. [:

Bedroom Katamari

(click for bigger)

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