What is a Pollock poem? How to write a poem using the poetic form inspired by Jackson Pollock

January 17, 2026 in Poetry, By Alejandra Ramos

Created by the poet, curator, and art critic, John Yau (b. 1950), a “Pollock” is a playful and inventive poetic form that pays homage to the work of the abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956). The “rules” are simple and reminiscent of Pollock’s own methods. Yau first used the form in a poem called “830 Fireplace Road: Variations on a sentence by Jackson Pollock.”

A Pollock is a 14-line poem that must begin with a line or quotation said by the artist. This initial line serves as your poetic painter’s palette, so to speak, from which you will then create the subsequent thirteen lines…

On Rivington

January 05, 2026 in Poetry, By Alejandra Ramos

The kind of silent that needed to be filled
with wild suggestions
like let’s find a psychic
to read our palms
walk across the bridge to Brooklyn
or book a hotel
just to eat
room service fries

Reckless (A Performance Score)

January 03, 2026 in Poetry, By Alejandra Ramos

It begins with a canvas covered from end to end, a single color.

Perhaps orange? Perhaps blue.

(Echoes of a long-ago lesson about restoration: the solid and color-blocked works are more difficult to restore. The simplicity puts the emphasis on the brushstrokes and texture, the errors more noticeable, the damage, the aging, the chips, the fades.)

The canvas is of an average size, slightly larger than a large book, something that can be carried.

(That is the main rule of this.)

We’re calling it reckless and it is a co-creation with accident.