The Poem-o-Matic

Humanities Day at the University of Amsterdam

As part of Humanities Day at the University of Amsterdam, The Amsterdam Writers Guild (AWG) came up with the idea of a Poem-o-Matic as a way of show-casing the Guild’s activities.

Basically the idea is this: Two poets sit with 2 type-writers… Yes, type-writers! People wander past and give the writer a theme, an idea or an emotion. It is then up to the poet to compose a short-ish poem around those keywords, type it up and .. hey presto! A brand new piece of art, typed up just for you AND you can take it away with you… Magnificent Idea!

As a writer, this was an interesting challenge. You literally have 30 seconds to asses the person, the words they have given you and find a tone and a voice and write something down. I wrote my poems on paper with a pen first and then fiddled a bit before typing them up… sometimes making more changes as I typed….

No time for writers block!