About

The Given Words project began on the beach in Sardinia in 2009 when the Colombian poet, Lilián Pallares, asked me for five words and chose five for me. Each of us wrote a poem including the five words the other had given us. I had moved to Spain almost six years earlier and had just started writing poetry in Spanish and found it was a great way to think creatively and also to practice my Spanish.

Back in Spain we decided to share this way of creating poetry and so I set up Palabras Prestadas ('Given Words' in Spanish) online so people from around the Spanish-speaking world could participate. During the project we have had words donated by many poets from Spain, Latin America, the UK, and New Zealand and we also received words from our local butcher, grocer, shoe repairer, from musicians, florists, mathematicians, comedians and so on.

What is surprising is how words which seemingly have no connection whatsoever can become indispensable to one another. Although everyone starts with the same five words they take on a different life in the mind of each person.

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What would you write if I gave you five words?

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I have used this project as a way of developing my writing and many of the poems from my bilingual collection Antípodas (Huerga & Fierro, Spain, 2016) began life as part of this project. Antípodas is available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.

Lilián has also included poems such as Afinada Tormenta ('Tuned Storm') in her collection Voces Mudas ('Silent Voices')

You can find out more about our creative work here:

www.charlesolsen.es
www.lilianpallares.com
www.antenablue.com

I hope you get as much fun out of the Given Words project as we have!

Charles Olsen