August 2022 Writing Prompt: Be Kind, Rewind
A VHS-inspired prompt that will take you back to the, uh, future.
You’re reading a guest post on PopPoetry by Trista Edwards (she/her), a writer, amateur miniaturist, and wax professional. She is the author of Spectral Evidence (April Gloaming Press, 2020) and the editor of Till The Tide: An Anthology of Mermaid Poetry (Sundress Publications, 2015). Her poems and writing have appeared in Ligeia Magazine, Flapperhouse, Dream Pop Press, The Adroit Journal, White Stag, Lover’s Eye Press, and more. She practices hearthcraft at MARVEL + MOON, and you can read more of her poetry on her website here.
I stumbled on Mitsu Okubo’s VHS Poems, as one does, spiraling down an internet rabbit hole. My local newspaper ran a small write-up in the Arts & Living section about a recent auction where a VHS tape of the 1985 film Back to the Future sold for $75,000.
Yup. You read that correctly: $75,000.
In addition to the tape being shrink-wrapped and in near-mint condition, it was owned and put up for auction by the actor Tom Wilson, who played Biff Tannen: the violent, insolent, sexual assaulter antagonist of the franchise’s three films. Wilson’s ownership undoubtedly enhanced the aura of the tape’s value among staunch collectors of the VHS medium and the film’s fans alike—for which both groups retain a slightly zealous reverence when it comes to the respective pieces of pop culture they love.
The thing is, I totally get it. I too am I collector of VHS tapes. Nay, I am but a fledgling hobbyist compared to many a serious collector, but I do understand the desire to own not only a piece of film history but also to own it on the physical medium of a video cassette. I am a millennial, born in the year of Back the Future’s release, which means sell me nostalgia and I will buy it. Albeit my budget for collecting is capped way, way, wayyyyyyy below $75,000. I mean, Great Scott! That’s more than the student loans that I racked up from three degrees combined!
All this got me thinking (and Googling) about VHS as an art object. Not only do fans of the medium enjoy watching the art that the tapes hold (i.e., the films) but we also love to display and share our collections, like art, with pride. This led me to stumble on the work of Mitsu Okubo.
Okubo is a San Francisco-based author and artist. The website for Basement, a shared artist studio in the Mission District, includes the following bio for Okubo: “Human IMDB, button masher, and screen-printing maestro. Works best in complete chaos.” The bio is accompanied by a photo of Okubo crafting zines in a beautiful cacophony of art, tools, and various creative riggings.
The bio on Okubo’s Instagram includes a handle to another Instagram account called @basementVHS, a self-proclaimed VHS seed bank of 3000+ and counting tapes. In Okubo’s Big Cartel shop, you can find t-shirts emblazoned with phrases such as, *Sigh* Twombly, Georgia O’Queef, and Pablo Picasshole, to name a few.
What really caught my eye (and what my search initially led me to) was Okubo’s book VHS Poems, which spans three volumes. The author’s website simply states the collections are “book[s] of poems written in VHS.”
The project entails crafting poems by curating the spines (i.e., titles) of VHS tapes and then photographing the collection/poem. The project hearkens to literary forms such as found poetry, cento, ekphrasis, and the exquisite corpse.
Here are a few examples that Okubo shares which are included in the volumes:
I am fascinated by this project. As a lover of VHS, I am delighted by the showcasing of the tapes and their sheer physicality and visual appeal, inviting creative artistic play to generate more art. Yet, as a poet, I do ask myself, is this poetry?
In the words of the incomparable Dr. Emmett Brown, We don’t need the VHS where we’re going!
Or something like that.
Now, PopPoetry is certainly a space that aims to challenge notions of poetry as an impenetrable elitist puzzle box only meant for the keepers of the ivory tower to dole out and comprehend. (That’s why we love it, right?) I definitely champion the call to upset this stereotype so maybe Is this poetry? is not precisely the question I want to be asking. Nor do I particularly care. But what I can ask is without the context of the VHS tape is the language interesting? And for me, that answer is well, not really.
Without the object, the poem loses its delight. The VHS as art object gives the poem its meaning. The tape is the animus of the entire work. And this most certainly seems to be the point. The homage is to the tape and not to the language, but it’s darn fun to create.
Roads? Where We Are Going, We Don’t Need Roads! Uh, I Mean, VHS.
These volumes got my old tape reels rolling with an idea for a writing prompt. What if I used the language of one of Okubo’s VHS Poems as an impetus for a new poem? To craft something more complex? If I remove the context of the VHS tape, how can I borrow the language/titles and work them into a poem in which they could hold their own? Because in the words of the incomparable Dr. Emmett Brown, We don’t need the VHS where we’re going!
Or something like that.
Required Materials: Writing device of your choice, analog or digital
Optional Materials: VHS tapes
You can use one of Okubo’s poems for inspiration for this prompt or if you have some VHS tapes lying about then you can craft your own poem!
I gave it a whirl, and I have to say it is harder than it seems to create a VHS poem that makes baseline sense. Perhaps this is because I only really collect horror films and the film titles are often only one word or overwhelmingly begin with the article The. At least my collection does, anyway! Arranging a poem was more difficult than I anticipated, so kudos to Okubo!
Here’s what I came up with:
My mind takes the liberty of including a comma after Friday the 13th. It reads more like calling someone out or as an insult than even the inkling of poem, but hey—you work with what you have.
Here are some loose, friendly parameters to begin your draft:
Use one of Okubo’s poems or a VHS poem of your own creation as a springboard for a new piece of writing.
Use every line of the original VHS poem as part of a new line in your new poem. (The title itself doesn’t have to exist as a single line alone—it can be part of a fully formed sentence and make structural sense, if you so choose.)
Make the new poem reference a VHS tape. Either the object in general or bonus points if you can draw the poem back more particularly to one of the films used in the original poem. (For example, not only do you use the phrase Friday the 13th in your poem, but your poem also alludes to a summer camp experience gone horribly wrong, bunk beds, a hockey mask, or a grieving mother.)
Here’s the beginning of a draft using the VHS poem I created:
I buried my mistakes in the lake, each one naked as crystal & unwed— each one a lucky little bride. Friday the 13th is my favorite holiday. We haul out the canoe, slash our virginity, & call our mothers to say, I know what you did last summer before diving under the docks. I rewind it all like a videocassette, replaying the creepshow of puberty each summer until the bunk beds slump & all the cabins renamed: Troop Knife Blade.
You get the picture! Overall, this prompt is a great way to free yourself up to be strange and challenge yourself to make unusual connections through seemingly mundane film titles. I’m curious to see how someone would pull together the first Okubo poem referenced above! Can you charm French kissing and spiders into a poem about a handcrafted piano from the 1800s?
Have fun, get creative, and you too can build a time machine out of a DeLorean!
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