The McDonald's Experience prose poem exercise

As I haven't posted in a long while, and today's the first day of National Poetry Month, with some, myself including, trying to write a poem a day, I thought I'd share a prose poem exercise I just gave to my undergrads in Sudden Prose. I'd be delighted to see your results.

Choose one of the following and talk about how the place would be transformed if it were set up like a McDonald's: mechanized, automated, branded, etc. Don't mention McDonald's anywhere in the piece.

McLibrary
McHospital
McHotel
McPolice
McUniversity
McCattery
McKennel
McPost Office
McPrimary School

Write as much as you can--try for at least eight sentences, then edit back to your most vivid, original details, for a total of 4-5 sentences.

For the last sentence, describe what the people/animals leaving such a place look like now that they've been through the Mc experience.

I apologise if this requires field research.

Thumbnail Magazine for short works

A new online magazine, Thumbnail, seeks short works: prose up to 800 words, poetry up to 40 lines. Read the first story of the current issue, Dorene O' Brien's "Alien Invasion Tapes, #87," and see if you don't laugh out loud like I did.

"Hidden from View: The Prose Poem in English Poetry"

is a useful historical overview of the situation, written by David Caddy and up on his blog. It originally appeared in Stress Fractures: Essays on Poetry, edited by Tom Chivers and published by Penned in the Margins; see the book's page on the press website for details of further essays on contemporary poetry.

David Gaffney's The Half-Life of Songs

Salt Publishing has brought out what looks to be an interesting collection of flash fictions by David Gaffney. To read more about the book and a delightful selection from it, please see this entry at Tony Williams' blog.

Flash fiction prompts

Writers of flash fiction may like to see these ideas for stories on flashfiction.net.

"Imagined Sons 18: Greek Salad" nominated for Micro Award 2011

I'm pleased to say that The Iowa Review has decided to nominate my piece, "Imagined Sons 18: Greek Salad," for the 2011 Micro Award, for the best flash fiction under 1,000 words published in the preceding year. The results are announced February 17, 2011. Wish me luck!

Spilling Ink's Flash Fiction and Prose Poetry Competition--deadline Halloween!

Entries may be up to 1000 words; read more details here.