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Writing Snowball Poems

·280 words·2 mins
Poetry Writing Prompts Constrained Writing Writing Prompt Experimental Writing Oulipo Sloths Snowball

I’m still sorting through old poems and that work has churned up some fun pieces made using writing prompts including the one listed below. I think this originated as a class assignment for a writing constraint called “snowballing” or just “a snowball poem”. As writing prompts go, this one is pretty straightforward and almost tailor made for writing poetry.

Produce a piece where:

  • Each line contains a single word
  • The next line contains either one more or one less letter than the previous

Following this prompt, you will end up with a triangle-shaped poem that either grows or shrinks in width. You could always do something fun by “snowballing” up to a line with, say, 10 letters, then “melting” your way back down to 1. However, for this writing prompt I was focused on making the biggest snowball in existence, and I feel like I got pretty close to the limit.

I must have had a lot of free time on my hands because I ended up writing a 20-liner about a bisexual two-toed sloth hanging out with con artists deep in discussion about matters of national (and psychic) security.

A bi two toed sloth walked amongst hellbent hucksters flagrantly masticating mockingbirds imaginatively deconstructing paraprosdokians conversationally intellectualizing ultranationalistic counterintelligence pseudohallucinations

Full disclosure, I did use a word-finding tool to help me get words of the appropriate length and type to keep the snowball growing. That said, I’m not sure how much longer I could have gone on.

Is this the biggest snowball poem out there? If you have a longer snowball poem or even just a snowball poem that you’re proud of, I’d love to see it and compare notes.

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