By Aaron Furman

 

Febreze – Ocean mist

 

Last week, Dee our resident poet, shared a brilliant technique to create poems about any inanimate object. Like all of SCA, their are underlying reasons as to why we do what we do. In this case, if we were able to create emotional stories for our objects, then theoretically, we can do so for any product we will be advertising. If you fellow Dee’s easy recipe, I promise you will be able to create poetry out of anything.

To demonstrate, I will go through these steps and create a poem for Febreze – Ocean mist.

Step 1

Close your eyes and feel the object for 10 minutes and then write down the sensations that pop into your head.

• Metallic 
• Hard
• Malleable
• Plastic
• Clink
• Fresh
• Sweet smell
• Sharp
• Pungent   
• Breakable
• Spew
• Vomit
• Tin can

Step 2

Now, you must write about any stories, images and connections that the object conjures up in your mind.

• A spray to cover bathroom odours
• A spray to cover the smell of smoke from your parents
• Winter nights smoking inside with my friends
• Spraying myself relentlessly before entering my house so my parents didn’t know I smoked
• Cleaning my room and adding a fresh scent
• Picking up seashells on the beach with waves crashing around
• Emerging from a tropic ocean
• A smell that takes you to an escape of the ordinary and monotonous
• Covering up the smell of vomit in your room after a night out during freshers week

Step 3

We must now write from the point-of-view of the object. Imagine it has a voice and explain what it would say.

• All I do is unnaturally cover up other smells
• I release myself at the beget of my owners
• I long to be at the ocean and join the smells I come from
• I am synthetic, never truly knowing what I am meant to be
• I am a shard/splinter of my ocean origins
• I want to be free of my casing and return to the atmosphere
• I feel uncomfortable in my own skin

Step 4

The last task is to now write the poem and keep in mind that the object must start from a place of feeling powerless to being powerful and empowered.

Ocean mist

I am trapped,

in a body not made of my own.

From plastic to metal,

I am malleable and breakable.

I long to be free,

back to the origins of the ocean.

Escape from the ordinary and monotonous,

synthetic smells longing to be part of something bigger.

Spewed and sprayed,

my fresh scent clings to the room,

forced from me,

by the torture of a clenched hand.

A quick fix from the night before.

A shallow multitool for past regrets,

and hidden actions.

I can cover them all.

Was this my purpose?

To be the last resort,

splinter myself on the demand of others.

I feel emptier and replaceable.

Where do I go?

When I am depleted,

and my case fragile.

I hope to return to the atmosphere.

I hope to drift between the ocean breeze,

Waves crashing beneath the air,

and I return to my natural state.

Ocean mist.