Your Invisible Cities: Reading, Blackout, Collage
A Vagabond Voices Writing (and Living) Prompt
I am collecting the petals of other possible haunts, dandelions pressed to paper, the pipe’s amber evening shadow weighed with pear blossoms and traces of happiness floating, children bleating while lambs play hide and seek until the lights wink in the distance your cities do not exist.
This is a collage poem clipped, pasted and inspired by:
A conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.
Snippets from the actual passage in the book: (pipe’s amber/ evening shadow/the lights in the distance/your cities do not exist)
A feeling that comes with reading this collection of prose poems — that travel leaves us weighing alternate realities. That every place we see may be simply the place we’ve come from…or yearn for.
A spring afternoon in a tiny city here in France where we are (once again) on lockdown and life lends itself to the surreal.
Nature and experience: sunshine, petals, movement, and other fleeting thoughts…
This time, my collage did not include cutting, pasting, painting or glue…but that is also a lot of fun (try it, you’ll see).
So that was my example.
And this is my invitation to you:
Tell me about your invisible cities.
What are the places that haunt your memory?
Is there a place from back when that you are always describing or pondering, no matter where you roam?
Is there a place close by that you can rediscover if you look at it closely?
Invisible Cities is full of “Ah’s” rising from balconies, tattoo parlors, strange winds…hay, and sawdust…
What’s in your city?
If you look around, what would surprise someone from the other side of the world? (Yes, we’re sprinkled all over the place and we’re listening!)
Do any of these musings from Calvino sound like ‘home’ to you?
“Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have.”
“Memory is redundant. It repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.”
Or do you have your own ideas already?
If so, just ignore me and grab your pen. Or your pot of glue.
Feel free to write from your reading.
By this, I mean… Feel free to use an excerpt from our book of the month, Invisible Cities, Or another book that inspires you! Create a blackout poem, found poem, or a collage.
For the writer, there is something of a collaboration that exists whenever we read other writers — from the past or the present.
We begin to write the story alongside the writer, our mentor. We fill in our own smells and experiences as we read.
The words and images find homes in our minds and prepare themselves for future lives in our stories.
So I invite you to play with this reality.
Collaborate with the writers you are reading.
Just be sure to give credit to any writing or writers that influence your stories.
That way we can fully enjoy your work, understand your references…and go on to be mentored by the same writer if we like.
Are you a Vagabond Too? Write with us.
If you’d like to write for Vagabond Voices, feel free to get in touch here with your Medium handle. Let me know a bit about yourself, why you think your work would be a good fit. And let me know if you have a story or draft in mind.
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