I wish ... some more

I should have sent this as the first warm up, but since we've had several new people join the list in the last week, it *is* the first warm up for them :-)

A poetry warm up is a template that lets you play with words without worrying about structure. It's sort of a coloring book for poetry :-)

This is a great initial warm up since it gives so much but allows for a great deal of goofy creativity.

Each line starts with "I wish" then must include a color, a fictional character and a place.

Here are some children's examples:

I wish I was green with Superman in the Negev Desert.
I wish I was Charlie Brown in blue Saudi Arabia.
I wish that I was Popeye with a yellow dress on me and in South Carolina.
I wish Bugs Bunny didn't climb the blue tree in Turkey Land.

From Wishes, Lies, and Dreams: Teaching children to write poetry by Kenneth Koch.

(By the way, if you want to create your own template, you're not limited to colors and fictional characters. You can start with anything. Kenneth Koch suggested animals, months, cars, planets, drinks, birds, states ... The possibilities are as vast as your imagination :-)