Start with the prompt, and write a new poem. You don't have to use the rules of the prompt, just write whatever poem wants to be written.
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See "How to use this site" for instructions on how to send your poem.
Year Two: 2019-20, Shepherded by Kathleen Wakefield and Kitty Jospe
- June: Prompt Options (pick one, or follow your bliss):
- Option 1: “Overwhelmed” For sure, this is a feeling best to avoid.
- Option 2: “Anything goes.”
- Option 3 (the Big One): Revision + Siri: Revision, from Latin, revisere, to visit or look at again. Siri: how often do you ask Siri (or google as “intelligent assistant”) a question and what answers does she/he give? How can she/he be a help or hindrance? Consider how you use or don’t use an “intelligent assistant” to write the poem.
Revision options:
- Take out a piece of work from six months ago. Look for any vagueness that could be turned into a “real” sensory image you can see, hear, taste, smell, crunch, spit out, etc.
- Write the opposite of your poem. Even if you are saying what you don’t want to say, you will breathe faster which will offer you something to think about.
- Cut up your poem line by line. Put all the lines in a bowl. Pull out the lines one at a time with an hour in between. Do they stand by themselves? Do they want you to write other things? Do they make you want to look up/google something new?
- “Blind date”. pick out all adjective-noun combinations in your poem and list them. Pair them up differently. If you do not have many, make a list of nouns and adjectives. Organize a search for nouns (however you want: by theme, subject, vocabulary used in a certain field, etc.) or adjectives. (color, texture, emotional qualities, etc.)
- May: "Five ways the night can save you"
- June: "Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see." -- Rene Magritte
- July: "Deep Water Days" (courtesy of David Michael Nixon)
- August: "Seen through a moving window -- car, train or plane" (Courtesy of Linda Allardt.)
- September: "Think of numbers . . . how they enter our thinking . . . whether the twelve days of Christmas or just the words dealing with them: multiplication, subtraction, addition, division. You might find inspiration from Mary Cornish in her poem "Numbers" (published in Poetry 180). (Courtesy of Kitty Jospe)
- October: 15 Ways of Looking at a Black Dot: One piece of paper, quickly make a big, black dot. Write a 12-line poem in which each line is a description of what the dot could represent. Don't mention the "dot" in the poem, just what it could be: the eye of the cyclops, oil from your broken car, the bullet hole in granny's rocking chair.... Create a poem that will intrigue and inspire your reader and don't worry about the poem making logical sense. (Courtesy of Two Sylvias Press, via Karla Linn Merrifeld).
- November: "No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible." Stanislaw Jerzy Lec, from A Treasury of Polish Aphorisms, translation from the Polish by Jacek Galazka (courtesy of Claudia Stanek).
- December 2019/January 2020: How Art helps us to vision/revision the world. Look at these paintings, transformed to reflect climate change. Pick one and write an ekphrastic response.
- February, 2020: Close your eyes.... one....two....three... JUMP! Open your eyes. Where did you land? (Thanks to Miriam Lerner)
- March, 2020: What are wounds to truth? Identify and apply first aid.
- April, 2020: “The creative effort of the imagination is to turn the boundary into a horizon. Then it is possible to say, “Let’s go there, and there, and there,” because there’s no end point for you.” (I highly recommend Christian Wiman’s collection of 100 poems in his book Joy. The introduction is delightful!)
Year One: 2018-19, Founded and shepherded by Wanda Schubmehl
- May: "At the confluence, a stone of shame."
- June: "Explore (literally or figuratively) a National or State Park. Spend at least half an hour hiking, biking, paddleboarding, whale-watching, or any other activity, even if it's through photographs, the Park's website, blogs or actual - gasp - book accounts of someone's experiences. Or talk to a friend who has been in a Park. You get extra-credit points for spending a few minutes with an endangered plant or animal. Then when you sit down to write the poem, whatever you do, write about anything other than this."
- July: Curator of the Beautiful Ruins
- August: Love one another
- September: This is a poem I wrote. Use it however you are inspired to do so.
Obituary for a Man Who Never Stood on My Street CornerHe was born under the sign of missed opportunities,without permission from the authorities.His shadow was bullied at school, causing himto avoid sunlight. He dismantled rainbowsfor a living. He could always see the tunnelat the end of the light. Stones would fleefrom the toes of his boots as he walked,and no matter where he went,no one followed in his footsteps- October: Begin your thinking with the words "hunger," "anger," and "linger." You do not need to use these words or concepts in your poem. As you think, play with the words - associate, change a letter in the word, use a near-rhyme, etc. When you arrive at something that catches your attention, follow that thread until you find your poem.
- November: I met you on the corner of Lost Street and On My Way. When we parted, you slipped a word into my pocket. What was the word?
- December: "To the Sioux of The Dakotas and the Cree, the first moon of the new year is known, in various dialects, as the 'Moon of the Cold-Exploding Trees.'" [from Wikipedia, "Exploding Tree."]
- January: I think January (and all the months, actually) should be renamed. Roman (mostly) gods?? Roman numbers that don't even match the current month?? We can do better than that! Rename January and write a poem sparked by your decision.
- February: This one is courtesy of a typo I made at work, trying to type Monroe Co. Office of Aging. Instead, I typed "Office of Again," so that's the prompt. February prompt: Office of "Again."
- March: Over and over, the surf whispers resurrection.
- April: Sort of In honor of Mary Oliver - Be on the lookout for a small thing in your everyday life that you feel grateful for. Start there.