The Poem in Question

On Harriet, Lucy Ives blogs about poet and artist Madeline Gins’ use “of the questionnaire as a means of generating collaborative writing” in “Be Very Specific, Or: Some Notes on Some Questions (by Madeline Gins).” Ives writes, “I have to admit that I am not quite sure what this question is getting at, although it seems related to the plural-ness of the respondents—as if Gins wants them to notice that they are many, and not merely singular, as well as to attend to the mediated nature of human vision.” In this collaborative spirt, we will be using the survey form to explore the plurality and generative possibility of questions.

Prompt:
Time yourself as you write in some way (with a timer, the length of a song, or the length of a page). Write for roughly 10 minutes in response to the following prompt. Try to write for the whole time, without stopping, in sentences, with no line breaks. Work to get all of your thoughts on the page, without worrying about what you are writing, or how. It is encouraged to follow wherever your mind leads.

Use the reproduction of Gins' quiz in Ives’ blog post, or find a survey, quiz, or test, either online or in a magazine, textbook, etc. The survey or quiz can be on any subject, and in any format. It should not be written by you.

Write for ten minutes in response to one or more of the questions in the survey. Don’t work to answer the question with the correct answer, and allow yourself to wander off-topic. If you find yourself slowing and unable to think of anything else to write, move on to another question.

Read the following poems composed in or around questions:

• Lin Dinh, “Quiz”
• Hilda Raz, “Some Questions about the Storm”
• Susan Stewart, “Four Questions Regarding the Dreams of Animals”
• Madeline Gins, "From 'Transformatory Power”

Writing Assignment:
Return to what you wrote earlier. What did you end up writing about? Do topics or images repeat? What patterns do you notice? Is there anything that you wrote about that you now find strange, or surprising?

Write a poem about a topic or image that was unearthed during your freewrite. Your poem should be composed primarily in questions, and may even take a survey or quiz form, and incorporate questions from the survey you discovered (with attribution).