Poets! Here we are, in the middle of the month, in a beautiful spring in a violent and mourning country. I am sometimes hopeful and sometimes just white-knuckling through. How are you?
I’d thought we take a little pause today and reflect and check-in on the writing so far. How has your writing gone? Take a look through your notebook, your digital files, the notes on your phone - wherever you keep your poems and the bits and pieces that contribute to them. Taking the pictures for this newsletter, silly as they are, has helped me stay attuned to the changing of the seasons around me, and I’m counting that as part of my writing practice right now. What have you written or recorded that you’re proud of, interested in, or surprised by?
Prompt #15: Take a little break. (Or write a cento, if you want to keep going.)
Take a break! If you want, look through your drafts and notes, maybe highlight or star the things that interest or surprise you. Think about the poems you’ve read lately - how have they entered your writing? (I read this Dora Malech poem, Each year, with my Lifelong Learning group today, and it was so lovely to be reminded of the pleasure of bewilderment, something I learned from Rachel Mennies’s great essay on teaching poetry. What is the “book of matches that can't refuse its end”? I don’t know! But I like saying it and puzzling over it.)
If you want to write a poem, you could try a cento. They’re traditionally lines of other people’s poems, but you could make a cento of your own work today, or collage your own lines with other people’s and perhaps interesting bits of language you’ve captured recently.
I’d love to know how you’re doing. Feel free to check in below with successes, thoughts, frustrations, poems you’ve read recently and loved, and so on. I’m also on twitter at @nancy_reddy and instagram at @nancy.o.reddy, if you want to share your work there!
I have never done a poem/day initiative. Never was drawn to it. But still I can agree with Jeannie below that this must be the best ever. Even with a daily writing practice, often it feels like cooking in a kitchen where the ingredients are hiding throughout the house, maybe even in the yard, or across the street... Your prompts, Nancy—their pacing, and the persistence each inspires—are gathering the staples and spices back to arm’s reach... Can’t thank you enough for this experience.
I'm not going to share a poem, but I do want to say this is the absolute best prompt session I have ever had! Thank you so much for all these great ideas, links, no pressure. It's been awesome.