“Inspiration is found more often in corners than doorways.”

“If you want to get stronger, lift more weight.”

“Swearing out loud is a pretty good way to reduce stress.”

~ Ima dé Theseup

“Dam It” is a force exercise, a poetry writing experience where you are forced to adhere to a relatively arbitrary list of rules and restrictions. In this case, you find a random-ish list of words and then force yourself to use those words to construct a poem.

“Dam It” is also the phrase you are going to say over and over during this process, as you realize that this is actually pretty hard.

Let’s begin!

First, find a newspaper or magazine and grab a pencil or pen. You are going to collect words from this source and arrange them to look like a dam.

Dams are not simply walls. A wall is the same width at the bottom as the top. A dam on the other hand is wider at the base than the top. This is necessary because the forces at the bottom of a body of water are greater than the forces at the top.

1. Open to a page in your newspaper or magazine and find a four letter word. 
2. Jot it down.
3. Find a different page and another four letter word.
4. Jot it down next to the first word.
5. Do this one more time–find a new page, find a new word, jot it next to the others.

You should now have a row of three four-letter words.

Next, do the same for five-letter words, creating a row and writing these three words directly below the row of four-letter words.

Repeat this process for six, seven, eight and nine-letter words.

Here is a sample list (notice how it looks like a dam with the base wider than the top):

4: plan bold rare
5: money light leaks
6: growth panels serene
7: fixture comforts wrought
8: dividing moisture explodes
9: landscape resurface transform

Now, take your eighteen words and write a poem, with these guidelines:

• Use all the words. 
• Make the poem have sense, at least as much as you can. Poetry can certainly be obtuse.
• If there are words left over, those words must become the title.

Having done this exercise using the example words above, I know firsthand that this is tough.

I was forced to start over many times. I came up with the title of this lesson as I wrote, saying it out loud several times.

Once you have struggled for a bit, you may, if you want, go back to your list and turn words back in, the way you can return tiles in Scrabble, for instance, and get new ones.

The rules for this exchange:

1. First, cross out the word you want to exchange. 
2. Then, find a new word (use the method above) of the right length and write it to the right of the other words.
3. You may exchange only one word for each length.
4. You don’t have to exchange words.

Here is an example using the words above:

4: plan bold rare film
5: money light leaks often
6: growth panels serene rather
7: fixture comforts wrought
8: dividing moisture explodes recently
9: landscape resurface transform disturbed

You can find the poem I wrote using this process, “Leaks”, here.

And that’s it! I suggest that you try to do this in one sitting. Read the words out loud to yourself first a few times and get a sense for them.

If you take this challenge, please put your poem in the comments along with your dam list of words and describe how the exercise went for you.

Sweet butter crumpets!

Frequently Asked Questions:

“Do I have to take the first four-letter word I find?”
–No. Find a word that is interesting. If “that” is interesting to you, go for it. If you find “toad” or “frog”, which are arguably more interesting than “that”, well, it’s still your choice.

“What if I can’t find any four-letter words?”
–Hmmm. That’s an interesting problem.

“Can I use a different form of the word that has more or less letters?”
–Yes. Go for it. “Transforms” can be “transform” or “transformed” or even “transformer” or “transformative”.

“Can I break the rules if I want to?”
–Sure, if you want, but I have to ask, are you in middle school? Also don’t forget about poetic license.

“Where did those quotes come from?”
–I made them up. I searched Google for each of them and they seem to be unique. If I find out they are not, I’ll attribute them appropriately.