Air From Other Planets

Just over a week ago I published a list of bizarre creative writing prompts that arose from some experiments made as part of my writing residency at MIMA. I asked people if they’d like to send me their poems and flash in response. To my delight, several brave souls have done!

So, here is the first of 30 posts where I will share my response to the prompt (in Instagram slides), and also a bunch of stuff by other people. Here’s the first prompt:

I was reading ‘Changing Planes’ by Ursula le Guin when I started working on this, so I was influenced by her format of multiple very short stories all presented as travel guides to other planets/dimensions. My short writings came out as advertising blurbs.

Here’s another approach from Lisette Auton…

Is mars air coloured red?

Will it glaze my lungs in flames?

One way to find out…

And here’s another two pieces from me! If you’d like to have your flash, poem or micro-poem included in the next blogs, take a look at the prompts and email me something to imeldasays at gmail dot com. Cheers!

And I almost forgot to add this fun piece from Rob Walton!

I was pure shocked to read in the paper about the big mountain of bloated bird corpses in Kent.
I said to Ken, I said, I said,
“Can it, can it, can it really be that there’s a mountain of dead gannets
grossly rotting on a beach on the Isle of Thanet?”
“Aye, well, you know what it is,” said Kenneth.
“They’d had enough of the poor air quality down there, so one of them – I think it was Little Jeffrey – went online and bought air from other planets. Turns out it was a bad batch. Cut with something or other.”
“Oh, that’s, I mean, that’s terrible. That’s such a shame. A crying shame.”
“Aye,” said Kenny. “Mind, they’re only gannets.”