Collage Quilt
Today I offer you a puzzle, a poem, and a prompt.
The puzzle
I've assembled a quilt from four of the striking cut-paper collages produced by participants in my online "Collage Making for Writers" workshop back in February. Each was assembled in a matter of minutes using materials that its creator had readily to hand.
Can you match the collages with the artists?
Writing for me is shooting for the stars, but sometimes being a whirling dervish. The collage sits on my mantle piece and reminds me to take a breath and enjoy the world around me.
(Jenny Bassett, simulation facilitator and lecturer at the Shepparton Campus of the La Trobe Rural Health School of Nursing and Midwifery, Australia)The space for writing is a blooming shelter where the inner child plays with colours while protected by ancestral wisdom.
(Catalina Ortiz, associate professor of urban planning and design at University College London)The title of my collage is "Revival." The picture is an attempt to raise awareness about the environment.
(Meriem Guerilli, lecturer in the Département de lettre et langues étrangères at the Université 20 août 1955-Skikda in Algeria)Sometimes, words and ideas are like a tangled dense jungle: something to wrestle through or to patiently unravel, de-knot, smooth out. The crystal prose I’m trying to unearth? It's all there amidst the seeming chaos.
(Elaine Lunn, Assistant Professor of Health Services & Systems Research at Duke-NUS, Singapore)
The poem
The artists' blurbs, in turn, inspired me to write a collage-like poem:
Collage Making for Writers
unearthing the crystal prose
of ancient wisdom
shooting for the stars
through a tangled jungle
whirling like a dervish
in a blooming shelter
vivid + real
revival
The prompt
Now it's your turn to make a collage, a quilt, or a poem -- or even a collage-quilt-poem -- from words, images, and ideas that you find around you.
Start by gathering whatever snippets of paper or fragments of text catch your eye, without worrying too much about their meaning or coherence. Then assemble them into a composition that gives you visual or verbal pleasure. It's that simple.
But there's another step to the process: the meaning-making stage. This is when you step back from your creation and let it tell you everything you didn't know you know.
Notice how the pink bunny and the white elephants are moving in the same direction, upwards and onwards? How the potted plant that obscures the child's head resembles a giant eyeball? How flowers, plants, words, and repeated patterns find their way into every image? There's another poem there somewhere -- and, no doubt, another collage that could be constructed in response to the images in my found poem.
Creative exercises like these can help you limber up your mind and sharpen your senses in preparation for more "serious" academic or professional writing. They invite you to experiment, explore, and take note of unexpected juxtapositions that may in turn inspire new revelations.
Warm thanks to Jenny (upper left), Catalina (bottom right), Meriem (bottom left), and Elaine (upper right) for generously sharing their collages.
Subscribe here to Helen’s Word on Substack to access the full Substack archive and receive weekly subscriber-only newsletters (USD $5/month or $50/year).
WriteSPACE members enjoy a complimentary subscription to Helen’s Word as part of their membership plan (USD $15/month or $150/year). Not a member? Join the WriteSPACE now and get your first 30 days free.