Refridgerator Poetry

Refridgerator Magnets are a wonderful source of creative expression. When else can you get drunk as fuck, smack yourself against a fridge and randomly assemble the most mind-bogglingly creative and inspiring poems you've ever seen in your life? (That is, until you sober up again)

Subversive Fridge Magneting

Take some blank fridge magnets, write inspiring messages, web sites, or activist slogans on them, and distribute them to the masses vis-a-vis their refridgerators.

DIY

Making your own magnetic poetry.

To buy magnetic poetry - no matter how fascinating and wonderful the stuff is - does end up being pretty expensive. Making it yourself is much cheaper. Many Magnetic Poetry kits include blank magnets so that you can put your own "personalized" word on them - but making your own magnets is even better.

Equipment:

• Computer with printer
• Pack of magnetic backed A4 paper suitable for printers - the "ausinc" brand is a good choice.
• Steel ruler and sharp cutting instrument such as a razor blade, scalpel etc.
• Scissors.
• Optional - dictionary, list of unusual words, poetry anthologies, etc. -For inspiration.

A pack of this type of magnetic backed paper costs around US$7.00.
It includes about five pages, which is enough to cover the fronts of almost two entire refridgerators. You could make more than one packages, and have big magnetic poetry parties on the weekend!

Method:

In a word processing program such as Microsoft word, type in all the words you could possibly imagine. I use Times New Roman in size 18 font.
Extend the margins out so you use as much of the page as you possibly can.
Set the line spacing to 1.5.

Remember to put two spaces between each word.
Otherwise, your words will look cramped when you cut them out.

Try to use alot of the most frequently used words in your language. There is a very long list (about 1000) here. Then - add all the other words that you want. Add your name, your lover's name, your pets' names. All the words that they never put in the magnetic poetry sets - you know....Lesbians! Monkeys! Soy! Ass-fuckingly! etc.

DO NOT FORGET
to add in lots and multiple sets of conjunctions and connecting words like I, am, me, us, you, yes, no, to, the, before, after, it, etc... I can't tell you how many times I've been frustrated because I couldn't formulate a sentence like: "Smack my wet booty."

Add symbols, numerals, spare letters, and lots of "ing" and "es" and "ed" and other useful suffixes and prefixes. Exclamation marks and question marks come in very handy. You could even go through things like the Wingdings font and pick out some of the cool bits.

Focus on specific topics: animals, gems, types of fabric, whatever you think could drum up a plethora of words to choose from.

Then - when you've put in all the words and characters that you want - read over your word document. Wherever there are blank, unused spaces in the text, put in little words that would be useful: I, We, You, me, sex, etc. Make sure you utilize every centimetre of space. Then - remember to spell check.
Can't have badly spelled magnetic poetry, now can we?

If you want - consider a test print run on a piece of paper.

Print off your wordage onto the magnet backed paper. It often requires 24 hours to dry - leave it somewhere where not too much dust will settle on it, where the cat won't tread on it, etc.

When it's dry, cut out the words. I use the ruler and razor to separate every line of typing, then use the scissors to cut apart all the words. There will be little bits of magnet paper left over - keep them.

With these left over bits - consider making random letter poetry - various different newspaper and magazine letters stuck onto them. Or tiny pictures that you draw yourself, or calligraphy letters, or anything else that comes to mind. A few blank bits of magnetic poetry are handy if you want to hide part of a word when composing your bullshit masterpiece.

DIY magnetic poetry isn't always as user friendly as the real thing - it's thinner, occasionally hops off the fridge when you don't want it to, and can be a bugger to get off the fridge when (eg) you're drunk and trying to play with it. But for $15 and a little time to cover three fridges with personalized magnetic poetry with crunchy good words on it - I say it's worth it.

Borrowed from:

Creating Your Own Word Magnets