All the world's a zoo - writing exercise with examples
(also referred to as 'Zoo-plaque poems' in 'The Works 8' John Foster. Macmillan 2009)
This exercise involves the writer in thinking of the whole world - objects, places, emotions, words - as an infinite number of animals in a zoo. Each has its names and alternative names, its appearance and characteristics, its life-cycle, its habitat, its way of feeding and breeding, its predators and threats.
It is based on a idea developed in a series of poems by the Cuban poet, Nicolas Guillen:
Hunger
This is hunger. An animal
All fangs and eyes.
It cannot be distracted or deceived.
It is not satisfied with one meal.
It is not content
With a lunch or a dinner.
Always threatens blood.
Roars like a lion, squeezes like a boa,
Thinks like a person.
The specimen before you
Was captured in India (outskirts of Bombay)
But it exists in a more or less savage state
in many other places.
Please stand back.
Nicolas Guillen
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In 2012, a class of year 9s took a set of abstract nouns - confidence, hope, stress, panic, compassion - and wrote a fascinating series of 'cage-plaques'. Previously uninspired writers became hooked on the power of metaphor. (Idea supplied to Buckinghamshire 'teachers as writers' project by Richard Andrews 2010)
This exercise was also undertaken as a warm-up by a group of 15 teachers at an NWP writing meeting at The Wellcome Collection on 21 January 2017. Afterwards the writing teachers wrote in response to the Wellcome exhibition 'Making Nature'.
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Teachers' examples and variations:
Gossip
Diet: It eats mainly fools, trifles and half-truths.
Habitat: It lives in classrooms, offices, coffee shops and street-corners where it breeds readily.
Appearance: It is small but noisy and grows quickly. It can be identified by its plumage of secrecy and denial.
Life-span: Generally short-lived , but often poisonous. If bitten, treat with healthy scepticism. Large colonies of gossip are known as ugly rumours.
Whether
Whether is a whistling conjunction – easily mistaken for rain or a castrated ram.
Food and habitat: It thrives on doubts and choices and likes to live in small questions and uncertainties.
It is usually more independent and positive than its trailing companion ‘not’ (as in the sentence: ‘I don’t know whether this makes sense - or not.’)
Sheds
Most common or garden sheds like to huddle by fences, in dark bituminous corners, keeping a safe distance from houses with whom they may be unfavourably compared.
Diet: Sheds eat men, power tools, bikes and spiders, often holding them in their capacious jaws before releasing them years later covered in a saliva called ‘rust’.
Occasionally, on allotments, you can see an elderly shed, such as Wayne E Lapp, leaning on a water butt and slowly collapsing.
Love
Amor amorphous
Despite experiments to cultivate it with chocolates, flowers or Christmas cards, love thrives best in the wild where it grazes on consideration and common kindness.
Plumage: Its heart-shaped markings mean it is often mistaken for sentimentality.
This rare species is now endangered.
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Here's another example of the format being used for particular effect. The plaque itself appears outside the cafe at Bristol zoo - and on the following website:
https://mrbarlow.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/the-crazy-animals-you-see-at-zoos/
Human Homo sapiens
Distribution: Entire world
Habitat: Can adapt most environments to suit them
Diet: Mostly omnivorous although many are herbivores
Population: Approximately 6.7 billion
Life span: average 70 years in wild
The human is one of the world’s most widespread species, and is present on all continents.
After a gestation period of nine months, the young usually live in the parents’ nest for around 16 years. While the parents are out foraging for food, juveniles are looked after in large groups by other adults.
In adolescence, the off-spring adopt a more nocturnal lifestyle and engage in ritualised activities of drinking fermented liquids and dancing to rhythmical sounds, which scientists believe may help them find a mate.
Humans usually pair for life, retiring from most social activity and moving into brick or concrete nests once a partner is found. Pairs produce an average of 2 young.
They are known to adopt other species as pets, particularly dogs (canis lupus familiaris) and cats (felis catus).
The human diet is very adaptable to regional crop varieties and personal taste, with some groups able to live almost exclusively on chipped potatoes and sugary drinks.
Groups of humans are often fed by unrelated individuals in exchange for tokens made of paper, metal and plastic – behaviour which can frequently be seen inside this enclosure.
https://mrbarlow.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/the-crazy-animals-you-see-at-zoos/
Humans have been at Bristol Zoo since it opened in 1836, and with the worldwide population increasing at an estimated 200,000 every day, the species is not currently considered endangered.
Simon Wrigley, NWP outreach director. Page updated 23.1.2017
This exercise involves the writer in thinking of the whole world - objects, places, emotions, words - as an infinite number of animals in a zoo. Each has its names and alternative names, its appearance and characteristics, its life-cycle, its habitat, its way of feeding and breeding, its predators and threats.
It is based on a idea developed in a series of poems by the Cuban poet, Nicolas Guillen:
Hunger
This is hunger. An animal
All fangs and eyes.
It cannot be distracted or deceived.
It is not satisfied with one meal.
It is not content
With a lunch or a dinner.
Always threatens blood.
Roars like a lion, squeezes like a boa,
Thinks like a person.
The specimen before you
Was captured in India (outskirts of Bombay)
But it exists in a more or less savage state
in many other places.
Please stand back.
Nicolas Guillen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 2012, a class of year 9s took a set of abstract nouns - confidence, hope, stress, panic, compassion - and wrote a fascinating series of 'cage-plaques'. Previously uninspired writers became hooked on the power of metaphor. (Idea supplied to Buckinghamshire 'teachers as writers' project by Richard Andrews 2010)
This exercise was also undertaken as a warm-up by a group of 15 teachers at an NWP writing meeting at The Wellcome Collection on 21 January 2017. Afterwards the writing teachers wrote in response to the Wellcome exhibition 'Making Nature'.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Teachers' examples and variations:
Gossip
Diet: It eats mainly fools, trifles and half-truths.
Habitat: It lives in classrooms, offices, coffee shops and street-corners where it breeds readily.
Appearance: It is small but noisy and grows quickly. It can be identified by its plumage of secrecy and denial.
Life-span: Generally short-lived , but often poisonous. If bitten, treat with healthy scepticism. Large colonies of gossip are known as ugly rumours.
Whether
Whether is a whistling conjunction – easily mistaken for rain or a castrated ram.
Food and habitat: It thrives on doubts and choices and likes to live in small questions and uncertainties.
It is usually more independent and positive than its trailing companion ‘not’ (as in the sentence: ‘I don’t know whether this makes sense - or not.’)
Sheds
Most common or garden sheds like to huddle by fences, in dark bituminous corners, keeping a safe distance from houses with whom they may be unfavourably compared.
Diet: Sheds eat men, power tools, bikes and spiders, often holding them in their capacious jaws before releasing them years later covered in a saliva called ‘rust’.
Occasionally, on allotments, you can see an elderly shed, such as Wayne E Lapp, leaning on a water butt and slowly collapsing.
Love
Amor amorphous
Despite experiments to cultivate it with chocolates, flowers or Christmas cards, love thrives best in the wild where it grazes on consideration and common kindness.
Plumage: Its heart-shaped markings mean it is often mistaken for sentimentality.
This rare species is now endangered.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here's another example of the format being used for particular effect. The plaque itself appears outside the cafe at Bristol zoo - and on the following website:
https://mrbarlow.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/the-crazy-animals-you-see-at-zoos/
Human Homo sapiens
Distribution: Entire world
Habitat: Can adapt most environments to suit them
Diet: Mostly omnivorous although many are herbivores
Population: Approximately 6.7 billion
Life span: average 70 years in wild
The human is one of the world’s most widespread species, and is present on all continents.
After a gestation period of nine months, the young usually live in the parents’ nest for around 16 years. While the parents are out foraging for food, juveniles are looked after in large groups by other adults.
In adolescence, the off-spring adopt a more nocturnal lifestyle and engage in ritualised activities of drinking fermented liquids and dancing to rhythmical sounds, which scientists believe may help them find a mate.
Humans usually pair for life, retiring from most social activity and moving into brick or concrete nests once a partner is found. Pairs produce an average of 2 young.
They are known to adopt other species as pets, particularly dogs (canis lupus familiaris) and cats (felis catus).
The human diet is very adaptable to regional crop varieties and personal taste, with some groups able to live almost exclusively on chipped potatoes and sugary drinks.
Groups of humans are often fed by unrelated individuals in exchange for tokens made of paper, metal and plastic – behaviour which can frequently be seen inside this enclosure.
https://mrbarlow.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/the-crazy-animals-you-see-at-zoos/
Humans have been at Bristol Zoo since it opened in 1836, and with the worldwide population increasing at an estimated 200,000 every day, the species is not currently considered endangered.
Simon Wrigley, NWP outreach director. Page updated 23.1.2017