Last week I had the most interesting experience. A friend of mine and I went to have a proper tea. We were allowed to pick out own teas. And we each had our own teapot. Everything was an astonishing amount of pink and I'm certainly more of an orange kind of lady. However-
-It was an absolutely relaxing time. The Victorian era dress of the waitstaff made me feel as though I'd stepped back in time. The luxury of it all. No loud voices, children dressed in their Sunday best. No hustle and bustle. No cross words. We had French onion soup, snacked on cute little sandwiches, and talked about everything that was going on in our lives. It was so therapeutic. Absolutely freeing.
There's something about our modern lives that sometimes carry us away from these kind of moments. Quiet bonding and fellowship. It brings a level of honesty to the conversation that's entirely gratifying. Let's try something for this new year to bring these quiet moments and conversations into our current lives.
Poetry Prompt:
Take ten minutes or more and to sit quietly. If you need soft music to let yourself relax, do so. If you can only hideout for that quiet minute in the bathtub, get those bubbles flowing. Let your mind roam free. Take deep breaths to the count of 5.
Inhale 1 2 3 4 5 Exhale 1 2 3 4 5
And once you've entered a place of inner tranquility, write. Write about whatever is in your heart. Be honest with yourself and don't hold back. I'm excited to see what you've written.
I was unable to participate in both NaPoWriMo (though I tried) and in OctPoWriMo in 2015, not because I didn’t want to, but rather because I was completely overwhelmed with my latest creative endeavor. In August of 2015, I started art school! I have always enjoyed all of the creative fields, but never fancied myself capable of drawing/painting/sculpting. With a little encouragement from my husband, I enrolled at my local community college and began taking art classes. While it’s been overwhelming at times, I have found a great deal of joy in the process.
The greatest lesson I’ve learned in the past three semesters as a visual art student is summed up in the above quotation from Leonardo Da Vinci. On every single drawing, painting, or sculpture that I attempted, the due date arrived before I felt they were “done”. When I think about it, the same is true of my poetry. I will toy with the words, tinker with the rhyme scheme and meter, and then abandon the effort. I never feel any of my poetry is finished either. Sometimes the result is something decent. Most of the time, I have doubts about the quality of my attempts.
The point here is that all of the work matters. Each of us can find the flaws in our work (as poets or as artists of any kind), but we keep trying. We keep coming back - to the page, to the keyboard, to the canvas - to either make changes to what we’ve done or to try again from a clean slate. That’s the beauty, I believe, of being creative. We don’t have to be done. Ever. We just have to keep trying.
The prompt: Go through your archives and find a poem that, for whatever reason, you “abandoned”. Rewrite the poem somehow. Add to it. Edit it. Or use it as a springboard for a brand new poem on the same topic or in the same form. Image Prompt:
“If you do
not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in
writing, then don't write.”
Anais Nin
One morning, like most mornings, I took my dogs Hank and Buttercup for a
morning walk. It was a chilly Bakersfield grey winter morning with a light mist
falling from the sky.
Water was
lightly falling on the skin of my face and hands that felt not unlike the
ubiquitous sprinkler misters used by outdoor restaurants in the middle of
summer to keep their patrons comfortable.
The three of us walked companionably for about twenty minutes when the sky
opened
up and it started to rain much harder.
I felt intoxicated by the water flow so I reached into it by tipping my head
back and really feeling each droplet of water as it poured over my cheeks and
chin and forehead.
They felt like miniature icy daggers yet they were relatively painless.
I breathed in deeply to see if I could tap into their fragrance.
I smelled cold interiors, tickling my nose with their lush frosty wetness.
Snowball
fights and pre-snow afternoons when I would walk out the front door of Glen
Ridge Middle School and inhale deeply, knowing the snow was imminent.
I smelled the deep freeze "walk-in" refrigerator from my days doing
restaurant work – when it
felt like only a couple moments inside were a couple too many.
I smelled deep caverns of Sequoia National Forest and Central Pennsylvania,
where cold water dripped off stalagtites which had never seen the light of day
and were coated in frozen
water – who knows how long they had been covered?
I smelled the kitchen of my childhood when my mother would defrost our
refrigerator, an
electric device of some sort stashed inside for its defrosting. The ice
from inside had such a distinctive smell.
None of these memories had been with me until I chose to rejoice in the rain in
the same way I usually rejoice in staying warm and dry.
What a difference this choice made AND what a treasure chest of poetry writing
possibilities I unearthed in simply choosing differently!
Here’s where
you enter into this creative equation:
Review your past week and note any
times you consciously chose a different than your norm choice.
Does anything come to mind?
If it doesn’t, you have a couple
options to inspire your poetry writing.
Prompt:
Create a
fictional “new choice” and write from that imagined experience OR go out into
the world and consciously make a choice that is different from your norm.
If you have
a recent experience to write from, enter into that recent memory with all your
senses. Tease out details of what happened, how it was different, and what you
saw, heard, smelled, tasted, physically felt or touched and any emotional
connections as well.
In whatever
case works for you, use your senses to purposefully evoke memory. The sense of
smell is especially good practice for poets as it ties in with the most
primitive parts of our mind. What you write will be evocative and interesting
and perhaps take you down a path you hadn’t thought of until you do this
exercise.
We are happy to announce that we at OctPoWriMo have moved to Poets on the Page. We have decided to begin the new year with weekly poetry prompts.
Yes we will still be having our month long adventure in October!
But now we will also have weekly prompts on Monday AND we will also have a month long poetry adventure in April for NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month).
So join us once a week, once a month, and/or everyday in April and October!
You can write your poetry on your blog.
You can tweet your poetry.
You can Instagram your poetry.
And you can share your poetry (or poetry links) on the Facebook group - Poets on the Page.
Share your poetry with the hashtag #PoetsonthePage (I know it's long but the acronym is already being used by a band on Twitter).
Now for our first poetry prompt in 2016!
I recently read a quote on Wild Woman Sisterhood from the book, Who is Magic Babe Ning by Ning Cai who quoted Rachael Fallon yogini;
"Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place."
This really hit home for me, it made me think about all of the conditioning from childhood, all of the shoulds and shouldn'ts, of who our family and friends think we are, of what society expects of us, and of course who we think we are.
I have often thought of who I would be without all of that. I even wrote a poem once about who I would be if I forgot everything, if I had amnesia, what kind of person would I be and who I would be without all of the attachments from the past.
How often do we think that we have to be better, do better, and become this better person? What if that wasn't it at all?
Poetry Prompt:
Write for ten minutes asking yourself this question - What if you stop trying to be who you aren't, let everything that isn't you drop away, and embrace the real you?
Music helps me to connect with my muse and spill my words to the page. Here is an epic music mix that will hopefully inspire you to dance your words into the world.
Experiment dancing and writing to this music and see where the words lead you.
We aren't fond of rules here at Poets on the Page. The only thing we ask is that you are courteous with your fellow poets, that if you leave a comment for us or on another poet's blog, you share the love and support that all poets need.
Be who you are, I believe in you!
******Updated on 02/26/2016. Corrected quote info to the book and author it came from.
Morgan Dragonwillow is a poet, author, facilitator and recovering perfectionist who uses music to connect to all things sacred. She is team leader at @StoryDam, creatrix of #OctPoWriMo and #PoetsonthePage You can find her Playing with Words and dancing on her blog.
