Coupling

A form invented by Karen McCarthy Woolf.

Take an original text and split into lines. Add your own lines below the original text to turn it into couplets.

Your lines can comment on the original text or change their meaning, in a similar way to Erasure Poetry or cut up.

The response line is intended to act as an asymmetric mirror of the original. You might have rhyme, assonance, repetition or a variation.

  • Difficult of Dawns by Malika Booker recontextualises political speeches with this method, changing the meaning. The speeches are in italics, hers are normal font, making the contrast clear. Pdf here.

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