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…