Reading suggestions-
Booklists and Awards have hundreds of suggestions for teen books, graphic novels, audio books, and films.
Guys Read is a “guy choice” list, where guys can search what to read based on a subject of interest, an author you like, or a specific title.
CM is book reviews, media reviews, news, and author profiles of interest to teens.
Reading Rants is an interactive blog featuring out of the ordinary booklists for teens.
Top 10 Teens: is a "teen choice" list, where teens nominate and choose their favorite books of the previous year
The annual White Pine Awards sponsored by the Ontario Library Association (OLA) encourages teens in grades 9-12 to read the best of Canadian young adult books, and then to participate in choosing the winner.
READ-ALONGS
Tumble Reads Teen Book Cloud is an online collection of read-along titles for elementary, middle school, and high school students which features adjustable online text and audio narration. Sentences are highlighted as they are being read and the pages turn automatically.
https://www.audiobookcloud.com/Default.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fTeen AudioBooksCloud
Access TumbleReadables from the database page.
MAJOR BOOK AWARDS
The Nobel Literature Prize is awarded to the person who has produced "the most outstanding work in an ideal direction" in the field of literature. View authors’video interviews and lectures and read text excerpts.
Any full-length novel, written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland is eligible for the Man Booker Prize
The PEN/Faulkner Award honors the best in published works of fiction by American citizens in a calendar year.
Citizens of the United States are eligible for Pulitzer Prize Awards for achievement in American journalism, letters, drama and music.
CANADIAN BOOK AWARDS
The GG is awarded to the best in English-language and French-language Canadian books in each of seven categories, including fiction.
Scotiabank Giller is awarded for the best Canadian novel or short story collection.
COMPLETE LIST OF INTERNATIONAL LITERARY PRIZES
International Literary Prizes is a compete list of international literary prizes.
Writing Experimentation:
Bernadette Mayer’s & Charles Bernstein’s Writing Experiments – adapted by
http://meadow4.ca/writerscraft/
About Bernadette Mayer
Bernadette Mayer was
born in 1945 in Brooklyn, New York. She received her B.A. from the New School
for Social Research in 1967.
She is the author of numerous books of poetry and prose, including: Poetry State Forest (New Directions, 2008), Scarlet Tanager (2005), Two Haloed Mourners: Poems (1998), Proper Name and Other Stories (1996), The Desires of Mothers to Please Others in Letters (1994), The Bernadette Mayer Reader (1992), Sonnets (1989), Midwinter Day (1982), The Golden Book of Words (1978), and Ceremony Latin (1964).
From 1972 to 1974, Mayer and conceptual artist Vito Acconci edited the journal
0 TO 9. With her husband, writer and publisher Lewis Warsh, she edited United
Artists Press. She has taught writing workshops at The Poetry Project at St.
Mark’s Church in New York City for many years and she served as the Poetry
Project’s director during the 1980s. Bernadette Mayer lives in East Nassau, New
York.
Bernadette Mayer at Penn Sound :http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Mayer.php
The Experiments:
* Get a group of words, either randomly selected or thought up, then form these words (only) into a piece of writing-whatever the words allow. Let them demand their own form, or, use some words in a predetermined way. Design words.
* Rewrite someone else’s writing. Experiment with theft and plagiarism.
* Write as you think, as close as you can come to this, that is, put pen to
paper and don’t stop. Experiment writing fast and writing slow.
* Do experiments with sensory memory: record all sense images that remain from
breakfast, study which senses engage you, escape you.
* Write on a piece of paper where something is already printed or written.
* Rewrite a page of a novel or short story backwards.
Describe, in as much detail as possible, every movement you or someone else
makes for 15 minutes.
Take an already written work of your own and insert, at random or by choice, a
paragraph or section from, for example, a science text-book or the classifieds
in a newspaper. Then think about re-writing your work to include, somehow, what
you have inserted.
Attempt writing in a state of mind that seems angry, or bitter, or spiteful, or
bored, or nervous, or…
Attempt to speak for a day only in questions; write only in questions.
What smells, tastes, sounds, textures, and sights do you remember from your
last meal? Write as many of them down as you can. What senses give you the
strongest memory? Which ones are the weakest?
* Write five short expressions of the most adamant anger; make a work out of
them.
Acrostic chance: Pick a book at random and use title as acrostic key phrase.
For each letter of key phrase go to page number in book that corresponds (a=1,
z=26) and copy as first line of poem from the first word that begins with that
letter to end of line or sentence. Continue through all key letters, leaving
stanza breaks to mark each new key word. (Cf.: Jackson Mac Low’s Stanzas for
Iris Lezak.) Variations include using author’s name as code for reading through
her or his work, using your own or friend’s name, picking different kinds of
books for this process, devising alternative acrostic procedures. Or use the
web Mac Low diastic engine.
Homophonic translation: Take a poem in a foreign language that you can
pronounce but not necessarily understand and translate the sound of the poem
into English (e.g., French “blanc” to blank or “toute” to toot).
# Tzara’s Hat: Everyone in a group writes down a word (alternative: phrase,
line) and puts it in a hat. Poem is made according to the order in which it is
randomly pulled from hat. (Solo: pick a series of words or lines from books,
newspapers, magazines to put in the hat.)
# Burroughs’s fold-in: Take two different pages from a newspaper or magazine
article, or a book, and cut the pages in half vertically. Paste the mismatched
pages together. (Cf.: William Burroughs’s The Third Mind.) Use the computer
Lazarus cut-up engine to perform a similar task automatically; also engines at
“Language Is a Virus:” Cut Up Machine, Slice-n-Dice, Exquisite Cadavulator,
& God’s Rude Wireless.And: Ron Starr’s travesty engine.
# General cut-ups: Write a poem composed entirely of phrases lifted from other
sources. Use one source for a poem and then many; try different types of
sources: literary, historical, magazines, advertisements, manuals,
dictionaries, instructions, travelogues, etc. See cut-up engines listed above..
# Cento: Write a collage made up of full-lines of selected source poems. (Or
see Kate Fagin’s short form centos.)
# Serial sentences: Select one sentence each from a variety of different books
or other sources. Add sentences of your own composition. Combine into one
paragraph, reordering to produce the most interesting results.
# Substitution (1): “Mad libs.” Take a poem (or other source text) and put
blanks in place of three or four words in each line, noting the part of speech
under each blank. Fill in the blanks being sure not to recall the original
context.
# Write a poem consisting entirely of things you’d like to say, but never
would, to a parent, lover, sibling, child, teacher, roommate, best friend,
mayor, president, corporate CEO, etc.
# Write a poem consisting entirely of overheard conversation. (See Kenneth
Goldsmith’s Soliloquy.)
“Walking on Colors”: Walk a city block or a country mile paying attention as
much as possible to one color; list all the things found in this one color;
write about it.
* Make notes on what happens or occurs to you for a limited amount of time,
then make something of it in writing.
* Find the poems you think are the worst poems ever written, either by your own
self or other poets. Study them, then write a bad poem.
* Choose a subject you would like to write “about.” Then attempt to write a
piece that absolutely avoids any relationship to that subject. Get someone to
grade you.
* Write a series of titles for as yet unwritten poems or proses.
* Write a work that attempts to include the names of all the physical contents
of the terrestrial world that you know.
* Take a traditional text like the words to the national anthem. For every
noun, replace it with one that is seventh or ninth down from the original one
in the dictionary. For instance, the word “honesty” would be replaced by “honey
dew melon.” Investigate what happens; different dictionaries will produce
different results.
* Attempt tape recorder work, that is, recording without a text, perhaps at
specific times.
* Type out a Shakespeare sonnet or other poem you would like to learn
about/imitate double-spaced on a page. Rewrite it in between the lines.
* Pick a word or phrase at random, let mind play freely around it until a few
ideas have come up, then seize on one and begin to write. Try this with a non-
connotative word, like “so” etc.
* Systematically eliminate the use of certain kinds of words or phrases from a
piece of writing: eliminate all adjectives from a poem of your own, or take out
all words beginning with ‘s’ in Shakespeare’s sonnets.
* Systematically derange the language: write a work consisting only of
prepositional phrases, or, add a gerund to every line of an already existing
work.
* Eliminate material systematically from a piece of your own writing until it
is “ultimately” reduced, or, read or write it backwards, line by line or word
by word. Read a novel backwards.
* Using phrases relating to one subject or idea, write about another, pushing
metaphor and simile as far as you can. For example, use science terms to write
about childhood or philosophic language to describe a shirt.
* Take an idea, anything that interests you, or an object, then spend a few
days looking and noticing, perhaps making notes on what comes up about that
idea, or, try to create a situation or surrounding where everything that
happens is in relation.
* Construct a poem as if the words were three-dimensional objects to be handled
in space. Print them on large cards or bricks if necessary.
* Get someone to write for you, pretending they are you.
* Write in a strict form, or, transform prose into a poetic form.
* Write a poem that reflects another poem, as in a mirror.
* Read or write a story or myth, then put it aside and, trying to remember it,
write it five or ten times at intervals from memory. Or, make a work out of
continuously saying, in a column or list, one sentence or line, over and over
in different ways, until you get it “right.”
* Make a pattern of repetitions.
* Take an already written work of your own and insert, at random or by choice,
a paragraph or section from, for example, a psychology book or a seed
catalogue. Then study the possibilities of rearranging this work or rewriting
the “source.”
* Experiment with writing in every person and tense every day.
* Explore the possibilities of lists, puzzles, riddles, dictionaries, almanacs,
etc. Consult the thesaurus where categories for the word “word” include: word
as news, word as message, word as information, word as story, word as order or
command, word as vocable, word as instruction, promise, vow, contract.
* Write what cannot be written; for example, compose an index.
* The possibilities of synesthesia in relation to language and words: the word
and the letter as sensations, colors evoked by letters, sensations caused by
the sound of a word as apart from its meaning, etc. And the effect of this
phenomenon on you; for example, write in the water, on a moving vehicle.
* Attempt writing in a state of mind that seems least congenial.
*Consider word and letter as forms-the concretistic distortion of a text, a mutiplicity of o’s or ea’s, or a pleasing visual arrangement: “the mill pond of chill doubt.”
* Write, taking off from visual projections, whether mental or mechanical,
without thought to the word in the ordinary sense, no craft.
* Make writing experiments over a long period of time. For example, plan how
much you will write for a particular work each day, perhaps one word or one
page.
* Attempt to eliminate all connotation from a piece of writing and vice versa.
* Experiment with writing in a group, collaborative work: a group writing individually
off of each other’s work over a long period of time in the same room; a group
contributing to the same work, sentence by sentence or line by line; one writer
being fed information and ideas while the other writes; writing, leaving
instructions for another writer to fill in what you can’t describe; compiling a
book or work structured by your own language around the writings of others; or
a group working and writing off of each other’s dream writing.
* Dream work: record dreams daily, experiment with translation or transcription
of dream thought, attempt to approach the tense and incongruity appropriate to
the dream, work with the dream until a poem or song emerges from it, use the
dream as an alert form of the mind’s activity or consciousness, consider the
dream a problem-solving device, change dream characters into fictional
characters, accept dream’s language as a gift.
* Structure a poem or prose writing according to city streets, miles, walks,
drives. For example: Take a fourteen-block walk, writing one line per block to
create a sonnet; choose a city street familiar to you, walk it, make notes and
use them to create a work; take a long walk with a group of writers, observe,
make notes and create works, then compare them; take a long walk or drive-write
one line or sentence per mile. Variations on this.
* The uses of journals. Keep a journal that is restricted to one set of ideas,
for instance, a food or dream journal, a journal that is only written in when
it is raining, a journal of ideas about writing, a weather journal. Remember
that journals do not have to involve “good” writing-they are to be made use of.
Simple one-line entries like “No snow today” can be inspiring later. Have 3 or
4 journals going at once, each with a different purpose. Create a journal that
is meant to be shared and commented on by another writer–leave half of each
page blank for the comments of the other.
* Work with a number of objects, moving them around on a field or
surface-describe their shifting relationships, resonances, associations. Or,
write a series of poems that have only to do with what you see in the place
where you most often write. Or, write a poem in each room of your house or
apartment. Experiment with doing this in the home you grew up in, if possible.
* Write a bestiary (a poem about real and mythical animals).
* Write a work gazing into a mirror without using the pronoun I.
* A shocking experiment: Rip pages out of books at random (I guess you could
xerox them) and study them as if they were a collection of poetic/literary
material. Use this method on your old high school or college notebooks, if
possible, then create an epistemological work based on the randomly chosen
notebook pages.
* Meditate on a word, sound or list of ideas before beginning to write.
* Take a book of poetry you love and make a list, going through it poem by
poem, of the experiments, innovations, methods, intentions, etc. involved in
the creation of the works in the book.
* Write what is secret. Then write what is shared. Experiment with writing each
in two different ways: veiled language, direct language.
* Write a soothing novel in twelve short paragraphs.
* Write a work that attempts to include the names of all the physical contents
of the terrestrial world that you know.
* If you have an answering machine, record all messages received for one month,
then turn them into a best-selling novella.
* Write a macaronic poem (making use of as many languages as you are conversant
with).
* Attempt to speak for a day only in questions; write only in questions.
* Attempt to become in a state where the mind is flooded with ideas; attempt to
keep as many thoughts in mind simultaneously as possible. Then write without
looking at the page, typescript or computer screen (This is “called” invisible
writing).
* Choose a period of time, perhaps five or nine months. Every day, write a
letter that will never be sent to a person who does or does not exist, or to a
number of people who do or do not exist. Create a title for each letter and don’t
send them. Pile them up as a book.
* Etymological work. Experiment with investigating the etymologies of all words
that interest you, including your own name(s). Approaches to etymologies: Take
a work you’ve already written, preferably something short, look up the
etymological meanings of every word in that work including words like “the” and
“a”. Study the histories of the words used, then rewrite the work on the basis
of the etymological information found out.
Another approach: Build poems and writings form the etymological families based
on the Indo-European language constructs, for instance, the BHEL family: bulge,
bowl, belly, boulder, billow, ball, balloon; or the OINO family: one, alone,
lonely, unique, unite, unison, union; not to speak of one of the GEN families:
kin, king, kindergarten, genteel, gender, generous, genius, genital, gingerly,
pregnant, cognate, renaissance, and innate!
* Write a brief bibliography of the science and philosophy texts that interest
you.
Create a file of newspaper articles that seem to relate to the chances of
writing poetry.
* Write the poem: Ways of Making Love. List them.
* Diagram a sentence in the old-fashioned way. If you don’t know how, I’ll be
happy to show you; if you do know how, try a really long sentence, for instance
from Melville.
* Turn a list of the objects that have something to do with a person who has
died into a poem or poem form, in homage to that person.
* Write the same poem over and over again, in different forms, until you are
weary. Another experiment: Set yourself the task of writing for four hours at a
time, perhaps once, twice or seven times a week. Don’t stop until hunger and/or
fatigue take over. At the very least, always set aside a four-hour period once
a month in which to write. This is always possible and will result in one book
of poems or prose writing for each year. Then we begin to know something.
* Attempt as a writer to win the Nobel Prize in Science by finding out how
thought becomes language, or does not.
* Attempt to write a poem or series of poems that will change the world. Does
everything written or dreamed of do this?
* Write occasional poems for weddings, for rivers, for birthdays, for other
poets’ beauty, for movie stars maybe, for the anniversaries of all kinds of
loving meetings, for births, for moments of knowledge, for deaths. Writing for
the “occasion” is part of our purpose as poets in being-this is our work in the
community wherein we belong and work as speakers for others.
*Experiment with every traditional form, so as to know it.
* Write poems and proses in which you set yourself the task of using particular
words, chosen at random like the spelling exercises of children: intelligence,
amazing, weigh, weight, camel, camel’s, foresight, through, threw, never, now,
snow, rein, rain. Make a story of that!
* Plan, structure, and write a long work. Consider what is the work now needed
by the culture to cure and exact even if by accident the great exorcism of its
1998 sort-of- seeming-not-being. What do we need? What is the poem of the
future?
* What is communicable now? What more is communicable?
* Compose a list of familiar phrases, or phrases that have stayed in your mind
for a long time–from songs, from poems, from conversation: * What’s in a name?
That which we call a rose * By any other name would smell as sweet * (Romeo and
Juliet) * A rose is a rose is a rose * (Gertrude Stein) * A raisin in the sun *
(Langston Hughes) * The king was in the counting house * Counting out his
money. . . * (Nursery rhyme) * I sing the body electric. . . * These United
States. . . * (Walt Whitman) * A thing of beauty is a joy forever * (Keats) *
(I summon up) remembrance of things past * (WS) * Ask not for whom the bell
tolls * It tolls for thee * (Donne) * Look homeward, Angel * (Milton) * For
fools rush in where angels fear to tread * (Pope) * All’s well that ends well *
(WS) * I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness * (Allen
Ginsberg) * I think therefore I am * (Descartes) * It was the best of times, it
was the worst of times,. . . * (Dickens) * brave new world has such people in
it * (Shakespeare, The Tempest, later Huxley) * Odi et amo (I hate and I love)
* (Catullus) * Water water everywhere * Nor any drop to drink * (Coleridge) *
Curiouser and curiouser * (Alice in Wonderland) * Don’t worry be happy. Here’s
a little song I wrote. . .
* Write the longest most beautiful sentence you can imagine-make it be a whole
page.
* Set yourself the task of writing in a way you’ve never written before, no
matter who you are.
* What is the value of autobiography?
* Attempt to write in a way that’s never been written before.
* Invent a new form.
* Write a perfect poem.
* Write a work that intersperses love with landlords.
* In a poem, list what you know.
* Address the poem to the reader.
* Write household poems-about cooking, shopping, eating and sleeping. * Write
dream collabortations in the lune form.
* Write poems that only make use of the words included in Basic English.
* Attempt to write about jobs and how they affect the writing of poetry.
* Write while being read to from science texts, or, write while being read to
by one’s lover from any text.
* Trade poems with others and do not consider them your own.
* Exercises in style: Write twenty-five or more different versions of one
event.
* Review the statement: “What is happening to me, allowing for lies and
exaggerations which I try to avoid, goes into my poems.”
Online Writing Groups:
http://www.youngwritersonline.net/
Wattpad
Movies about Writers:
Midnight in Paris
The Hours
84 Charing Cross Road
Mrs Parker
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Henry & June
Capote
Finding Neverland.
Sylvia.
Wilde
Basketballl Diaries
Becoming Jane
Miss Potter
My Brilliant Career
Barfly
Kafka
Il Postino
Empire of the sun
Gothic/ Haunted Summer
An Angel At My Table
Mishima
Tom and Viv
Irish
Anonymous
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Dead Poet's Society
Beginnings