Writing in the Margins
Kettle boiling, jazz playing (Gretchen Lieberum – one of my first introductions to the genre), lights dim… Sunday evening.
We had a lovely meeting today, despite (because of?) the fairly low energy we all brought to the space. I’ve been thinking about the poetry I wrote all day, spinning the poems around in my mind and trying to figure out how to process the feelings they brought up. That, to me, is the sign of a very productive workshop!
We wrote on three prompts.
The first, a five minute prompt, was based on Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge’s introduction to her book “poemcrazy.” We were invited “to drop a line into the pool of words around you and within you to begin making poems that express more than words can say, an act Allen Ginsberg calls ‘ordinary magic.'”
Our second prompt was from Agodon & Silano’s “The Daily Poet” for August 10: “Write a poem about the history of a relationship where each line is comprised of only six lines.” We wrote for 20 minutes on this one.
And our last prompt came from the Scrabble game that happened at the Possibilities Community Cafe on Friday, where the words “barfo/barfot: a person who intentionally attempts to induce vomiting” and “snottweed: a) a pronunciation of “it’s not tweed” – snottweed; b) a tweed made of snot; c) a tweed clothing item worn to be used as a handkerchief” were coined. The prompt was to either use those words (with the provided definitions or your own) or to write a poem about/including your own made up words. This was a 12 minute writing session.
And now a final fourth prompt for you to write on at home –
Write a poem about desire. This could be any kind of desire – for food, time, friendship, love, sex – anything. If it’s helpful, start with a word bank of the terms that are associated with that specific desire. Give yourself 10 or 20 minutes depending on your preference, and write!
Then stretch. Breathe. You are doing amazing work, poets! Good job.
