Blogtober // Book Line Poetry

Hi guys!
I’m doing a bit of a different post today – a while back I read Jemma’s blog post where she created a little song or poem using lines from a book, and I loved the idea so much that I just had to make some of my own. Sticking with the theme, of course, they’re all on the spooky or atmospheric side! Here’s how to play:

1. Pick your favourite book OR count along your bookcase or e-reader library etc until you get to your age and pick the book you finish on.

2. Take that book and look at the blurb and note down the word of the first three sentences or close your eyes and pick three words at random. This is the title of your song. (If there is no blurb then you can use the first three chapter names or three words to describe the cover perhaps?)

3. Next, use your date of birth to choose which pages you’ll use to hunt for song lyrics. You can pick any two lines from each page or the first and last.

(My birthday is 19/06/1993 so I would use pages 19, 6, 19 and 93 – a lot of books don’t have anything on page 6, so I sometimes used page 60, and rather than using page 19 twice I’d use 119, 219 etc).

4. Write them down in any order you like, it can make as much or as little sense as you like.

5. Your song is now complete!

Here are a few I’ve created:

Perfectly Preventable Deaths by Deirdre Sullivan:

Gravest Nascent Witchcraft
I would be the one left behind
The mountains big and silent behind me
The murder palace
There was ruin here before,
Very big ideas.
She smiles, half in love
A statement of fact that doubles as an insult
We all end up as old forgotten bones,
Don’t make me ashamed of my body.

Darkdawn by Jay Kristoff:

After Her Enemies
Perhaps you only hear what you want to hear
he tilted his head and smiled wider, stilling the heart
You don’t remember me
the rage only swelled
fresh, new, ripe blood
wreathed with the stink of rot
“More nightmares?”
dreams of blood and fire, dreams of endless gray

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente:

Years pass, longing
I have come for the girl in the window
his eyes narrow with a wicked cleverness
something black was coming for her
it was here, and it was handsome
“Why is it safe for you and not for me?”
“Girls have to obey rules. Chyerti break them.”
The room went suddenly frigid,
War is not for winning.

Other Words For Smoke by Sarah Maria Griffin:

Watching, Waiting, Consuming
It was more than a little uncomfortable
pulled by curiousity or something else. Something worse
steal me something hidden – i give you so much
you murmur sickened apologies
the ceremony done, the ritual complete
she was a new woman
he was so afraid
a monster, you think
a monster, you are sure

If you decide to make any of these book poems, I’d love to see them in the comments!

love,
Becky