Paint Chip Poetry: A Very Useful Game in Writing Practice

Guest Post by Megan Rahm

Have you ever been to Home Depot or any hardware store and marveled at the beautiful array of colors from the paint chip samples? Who has the fun job of naming all of those colors? It’s an inspiration jackpot! I have never left Home Depot without a handful of paint chips.

Now imagine creating poetry from all those wonderful color names. Author Lea Redmond created the game, Paint Chip Poetry, with that idea in mind, and as I found out last April, the game became a lifesaver in my own writing practice.

Every April, poets celebrate National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) by writing a poem a day. Just like last year, I planned to take on this challenge once again in 2024, and I knew I would have plenty of time to do it.

I had injured my knee and had surgery on April 2, leaving me stuck at home recovering for six weeks. Yes, it sucked, but at the same time, I all of a sudden had a lot of free time to brush up on my writing skills. A poem a day? I ended up writing ninety-three poems in April!

The problem was it felt like the outside world was going on without me, and it was hard to feel inspired. My writing has always been based on my life, so when I’m not doing anything I fall short on ideas.

Enter Paint Chip Poetry! I first learned about this game at work. For the past six years, I have been the arts liaison at a mental health organization. It is an awesome job, and I spend my days painting and writing poetry with other people in recovery. The arts liaison is a peer supporter position, which means I am in recovery, too. After being diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, I found my voice in art and writing, and now it’s not just an important part of my recovery, but a part of my career as well.

Paint Chip Poetry is one of our favorite activities at work. We have created both poetry and prose using the game. Sometimes the results are absolutely beautiful and other times they are hilarious. It’s such a fun game to play with other people!

The game includes four hundred paint chip cards that show a color along with its name. The game also includes forty prompt cards. You draw a prompt card and twelve paint chips, and you let the colors and their names inspire your poem. A tip from the included instructions: consider the multiple meanings and connotations of the words and colors. You can play this game by yourself for your own practice, or have a lot of fun playing it with a group.

I created the poem “Tulip” during a round of Paint Chip Poetry while recovering from knee surgery.

*

Tulip

Break me.

Knock me down.

Every heartache is a stepping stone

and my future is under construction.

Pick me like tulips in spring

and watch me wilt.

I come back every year

stronger, steadfast.

I’m grounded in my roots,

nourished by the storm,

and at dawn, I flourish again.

Remember my beauty

in the long winter months.

*

The paint chips I used in this poem were the colors “stepping stone”, “under construction”, “tulips in spring”, and “storm.” When I draw the paint chips, I often look for a way to relate them to each other. For example, “tulips in spring” and “storm.” Flowers need water, and where I live, it storms a lot in the spring. Although I drew twelve paint chips, I only used four. You can use as many or as few as you would like.

The prompt card I drew was “When I’m Old.” I think the prompt cards are fantastic in Paint Chip Poetry. They are just specific enough to help you create an image while being broad enough to give you a lot of freedom to play. Just to give you some examples, a few of the other prompt cards are “I Predict”, “This is How It Will All End”, “It Runs in the Family”, and “Listen Carefully.”

Honestly, I don’t always use the paint chips and prompt cards together. You can easily come up with poems just using the prompt cards, and sometimes I like to just draw a bunch of paint chips and go to town. They both work really well, but the added challenge of using them together is really nice!

While I was recovering from knee surgery, I played Paint Chip Poetry every day. It brought me inspiration I might otherwise never have had, and I was very happy with the results. I am considering making a chapbook out of some of the poems I wrote last April.

Paint Chip Poetry is distributed by Chronicle Books and costs about twenty dollars. The game has been so useful in both my personal and professional life that it has been well worth the money. While the game is available on Amazon, I would suggest purchasing it directly from the creator.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Megan Rahm (she/her) is a restless mom from Toledo, Ohio who has found her voice in art and writing. Her spirited eight-year-old daughter often inspires her work and she never leaves her house without her Chromebook and Sharpies. She loves Toledo’s weather and hates Costco on a Saturday afternoon. Her debut poetry collection, Free to Roam: Poems from a Heathen Mommy, was released in 2021 by Freethought House. She also publishes frequently on her blog, From the Ashes of Faith.