Whilst undertaking research in the field of linguistics, I delved into understanding the basic building blocks of language, words. Having received a pack of fridge poem magnets for my birthday, I decided to conduct a fun home-based research activity on my fridge door. I placed all these magnets on the fridge and started the ball rolling by creating my own short poem. Over the next few days I noticed other family members used the magnets to create their own poems, themes ranged from funny, romantic, inspirational, sarcastic to nonsensical. Visitors and guests were also intrigued when reading our fridge poetry and asked if they could contribute, I could see this was catching on as a        fun activity.

Over the next few weeks I observed that often an existing poem (including my own) was often altered and changed by someone else. This borrowing and extending someone's original thought became quite conversational and social in nature. It reminded me of texting using a mobile phone. Similar to a smartphone’s Qwerty keypad, the given selection of magnetic words were limited in terms of expressing true depth of emotion. It was this idea if limitation and reducing language to it’s bare bones is what I found so interesting.