At our last Writer’s Group we took one of Bernadette Mayer’s prompts. Pick a phrase at random and let your mind play freely around it until a few ideas come up. Seize on one and begin to write. I took the anonymous poem ‘Sumer is icumin in’ and played around with representing bird song by using phonetic spelling which I hope is onamatopoeic!
Sumer
Apologies to Anonymous (mid 13th century)
Sumer is icumen in sing cuccu
cuccu summer is icumen sing
sing soprano nightin-gal nu-ipp
nu-ipp nu-ipp tweeeeeeeeee pi-oo!
Jug-jug-jug choc-choc zeeeeeee!
Summer is icumen in sing sing
cuccu cu-cucco cuccu cu-cucco!