June PoWriMo Prompt#18

This is a technique introduced to me at a workshop at the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference that I found interesting and effective. It is negative inversion. In this technique, you take an existing poem (yours or someone else’s) and flip (or reverse negatively) the nouns and verbs in each of the lines.

Take this example, from one of my poems.
Her whisper guided him along the banks
of the river where the rocks..

Flip the nouns and verbs negatively:
Her scream pushed him away, away from his embrace
across the room and beyond his walls,

or something similar. This is just a crude example. This is a technique of play and word manipulation. Try it out. You may get nonsense or it may take you somewhere you may never go on your own. Try it.

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