Tom C. Hunley’s Scotch Tape World is now available from Accents Publishing! As part of the launch festivities, we are giving away a free copy of the book to one lucky poet who can follow Mr. Hunley’s writing prompt and post a poem in the comments below.

Usually after I finish reading a book of poems, I try to write a poem, using the following method, which I invite you to try.

Step One:  Look closely at the book’s table of contents, and underline two-to-five word phrases that intrigue you in several of the titles.

Step Two:  Combine phrases from two or more titles from that book, creating a new title that intrigues you.  Tweak the phrases as needed.  For example, after reading Bender by Dean Young, I combined elements of two of his titles, “Scarecrow on Fire” and “Shadow on Water” to form the title “While We Were On Fire, Our Shadows Glided on Water.”

Step Three:  Underline favorite phrases or lines from at least fifteen poems in the book.

Step Four:  Write a poem using the title from step two.  Let the body of the poem be guided by that title and by the phrases and lines that you copied in step three.  For example, after underlining “flames rush in smudges / like lovers who must pass through one another” in Dean Young’s poem “The Afterlife,” I began my poem with these lines:  “The flames were not literal though they / embraced like passionate drunken lovers.”

Step Five:  Keep writing until you get stuck.  Once you get stuck, turn to the next underlined phrase or line in the book.  For example, Dean Young’s lines “I didn’t know how alone I was / until they brought out more chairs” (“Beloved Infidel”)  led me to write “I didn’t know / how alone I could feel until an airplane / put 3,000 miles between us” which led to about fourteen lines that had nothing to do with Young’s poems, lines about a couple acquaintances of mine who had passed away.  When that train of thought stopped at its station, I glanced at Young’s poem “Bivouacked & Garrisoned Capitol” and saw “April snow vanishes / like footprints” underlined, which led me to write, of one of my deceased acquaintances, “He later vanished like April snow, and I received / the funeral announcement a week too late.”

-Tom C. Hunley

Remember: post your poem in the comments below for a chance to win Tom C. Hunley’s Scotch Tape World! For the rest of you, Scotch Tape World is now available from the Accents store and the Morris Book Shop!

“Hunley’s ability to render his love and bewilderment precisely in his poems is unique and necessary.”

-Shane McCrae

Tom C. Hunley is an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University and the director of Steel Toe Books. Among his previous books are The Poetry Gymnasium (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2012); Annoyed Grunt (Imaginary Friend Press, 2012); Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2010, Gold Invitational Series); Octopus (Logan House, 2008, Winner of the Holland Prize); Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five-Canon Approach (Multilingual Matters LTD., 2007, New Writing Viewpoints Series); My Life as a Minor Character (Pecan Grove, 2005, winner of a national chapbook contest); Still, There’s a Glimmer (WordTech Editions, 2004); and The Tongue (Wind Publications, 2004). He divides his time between Kansas and Oz.