Song title poetry challenge continues

We're going to the streets, sights and alleys of our town this month.

For July’s song title poetry I want you to sing along the tunes that come to mind when you walk about in your hometown. Maybe the ride on the bus or the underground stop names make you think of songs?

Every time the tube, underground, subway passes through certain stops, I hear a song in my head play. Is it just me? So I want you do to work out a poem with the play list that plays in your head when you’re about town.

It could be streets or neighbourhoods, places or squares, names or events that connect to a song. Take the song titles and arrange them into a poem. If you want provide a link and artists behind the songs.

I’ll give you an example. Every time I’m at Baker Street, I hear the saxophone and the song Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty.

If you want to do songs in another language you can. May I suggest you also put the artists’ names in your comments at the beginning so it’s clear who the songs belong to.

We dedicate the first Friday of the month to a themed song title poetry. We covered a lot of artists and genres in May and we also left out certain types of music.

Post your song title poem in the comments below and share it on notes and maybe even do your own post about it. Up to you! And do post the link in comments if you do post on your site.

During NaPoWriMo one of the prompts made me write a tribute to The Cardigans, fronted by the lovely Nina Persson. I took some of their song titles, rearranged them into a poem and so my first song title poem was born. I started with a song I could remember first and continued building the poem by adding titles that fitted in the story I wanted to tell. You can read that poem and some of the comments here on my publication. The song title poetry evolved to something more than random titles thrown together. In May a group of us wrote a poem designated to a letter a day until the whole alphabet was over.

My understanding is titles are not copyright issue. As the lines of song title poetry are all quotes from titles and as song titles they are not copyright material we are ok. I would ask that you in your posts, comments Notes etc make clear that the work is based on song titles and whose they are. We’re not adding any words of our own, I know some of you are… but you know - I’m not judging! Be very very clear to what part is yours and what part is the song title, use “quotation” marks to be on the safe side if you mix words which are yours in. Ideally, try to leave your words out and see what you come up with.

Don’t change the titles in anyway and don’t talk badly about the band/song if you wish to stay out of trouble.

Be obscure, be pop, be punk, be random. Let us know which songs we should sing walking down the streets of your town or village.

Photo by Felix Hanspach on Unsplash

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