Poets: Prepare to Start Your Engines - Poetry Pre-Writing Tip

Note in the title I did not say START your engines. We have ten days left until the “big” day appears.

Car racing is part of the life blood of the family I was raised in and is even showing up in parts of the next generation of Jordans. When I was a young girl, I would spend hours and hours and hours in the garage, handing my brother, the race driver, tools. You know, sort of like a doctor asks for scalpels.

All that gorgeous, seemingly without effort grace on the race track doesn’t start when they raise the flag, it starts long before, when the drivers work on their cars and finally warm up their cars during the days before the big race.

I am going to share with you one of my favorite poetry writing warm ups.

I use my old fashioned notebook and simply write lines of poetry. Not poems, but lines of poetry, sometimes smoothed together into several lines, but usually just lines.

Because I love the haiku form, I often write lists of five syllables and lists of seven syllables and then I randomly put them together.

This has two effects: one is it sharpens my observations and helps me write clearly and concisely with carefully chosen words, it also allows me to the space to see the grace in simply showing up at the page to warm up.

Sometimes those non-effort haiku have actually been better than when I was trying.

I just saw a play, so I am going to revisit some of the scenes in a list of five syllables:

Stripes of glitter

His ears were not his

Gold dust  all around

Thees, thous, Entreats, huh?

Only one in white?

Bookish Helena

“Hermia” now blonde

Thin Lysander

Bottom stole the show

After Puck, he died

And now, how about some seven syllable lines?

Demetrius, more wispy

Dead Poets society

Plays in my head while I watch

Love the feathers in that crown

Feathers, can they sing like birds?

Pixie like face glitter smile

Down home music strums, struts, pounds

Yee haw, let’s try some moonshine

Animals always woo us

 + + + + +

The first time I made up this exercise I was sitting in a coffee shop, just writing what I saw, lines like:

Red deck sneakers squeak

Mommy takes baby

Baby takes Mommy

Purr, computers, purr….

Espresso smells so….

Who does she wait for?

Textbooks in a pile

Awkward laugh hovers

“Forgot my back pack!”

It is more fun than it looks – I guarantee it.

I also guarantee that warming up through using this very simple exercise over the next few days will assist you in being more attentive and writing more concretely, with more details and fewer “fluff” words.

If I happen to see one of you at a coffee shop scribbling in your notebooks or pretending to text on your phone, I’ll know what you are doing. I won’t tell a soul!

-- Julie Jordan Scott

Poetry Writing Prompt for OctPoWriMo Day 13: Laughter, Laughter and More Laughter

It has been an interesting writing and living day here in Bakersfield.

How has it been in the place you call your home, even if you are traveling and this is just “home for a day?”

I did some writing that turned into quite a huge barrel of a-ha flakes poured over my head.

Naturally I think I did some tune-up by writing my pantoum the day before so images from my early childhood were ripe for the plucking, but a high school football game memory is the one that reached out and grabbed my heart in the most soulful way possible.

Here is what I wrote:

“In Fall 1979 I was a senior at Dana Hills High School in Dana Point, California. I have no idea who we were playing because I didn’t care about our lousy football team which rarely won a game. I went to the games to socialize. On this night, I was flirting with a boy with curly blonde hair. I think he was a friend of a friend. I was due to graduate early, I was working at a job I loved, I was finally feeling comfortable in my skin.

For some reason the blonde haired boy whose name is lost in memory found something ridiculously funny and we sat on the bleachers and laughed and laughed and laughed and it was, all of a sudden, like we were in an invisible bubble and no one else was there.

You might think this moment would end with the cliché high school kiss or something, but it didn’t.

Instead it just ended with laughter and the bubble going away but me, feeling almost overwhelmingly content in that moment. There were no expectations, no explanations, no possible heartbreak, no reason to be afraid, no awareness of what was to become of my life. I was no one’s sister, no one’s mother, no one’s best friend, no one’s babysitter, no one’s student… for that bubble moment I was just me and that blonde boy laughing.

When I came back to the world that joy of nothingness and everythingness continued. Last night, it showed itself to me again. Even now I am smiling about it.”

I call the “I remember” prompt the Grandmama of all prompts. 

We are going to dig into memory right now, especially seeking out the positive memories.

Until today, I didn’t realize that memory moment with that blonde mystery boy was so rich. It stuck in my mind for a reason, though – to remind me I did know soulfulness when I was young. It was always there, waiting for me to tune in, even when that tuning in simply meant laughing at who knows what.

Why don’t we try that, together.

Prompt: Let’s start with a brainstormed list of 5 to 10 times you remember laughing. It could be from last week or two years ago or, like mine, more than thirty years ago.

Take your time with the brainstorming, by the way. It will help if you put your hand on your heart, close your eyes and think or say aloud, “Laughing… I remember….” And allow your brain to sift through itself to bring up moments of laughter. 

After you have at least five (you may go longer if you want to!) pluck one from the list and write…

Word Prompt: Laughter…..

Sentence Starter Prompt: I remember laughing……(or) Laughter… I remember….keep repeating the I remember as you write and then go back and mold the freewriting into a new poem. 

Photo Prompt: Look above at the laughter photos…..(and think I remember laughing….)

Video Prompt: Watch the Video Prompt below.... 

It is the weekend at OctPoWriMo and as usual, my weekend is scheduled chock full o’activities. Even as I write I am on a break from driving Emma’s choir friends to a gig and home from a gig. I love it. Where else can you find a group of teens who sing-along with “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and even know the harmonies?

(Does that image bring anything up for you?)

Have a delightfully creative weekend. If your word flow slows, remember it is always right there, waiting for you to reach in with your pencil, pen or fingers to the keyboard.

Word-Love,

Julie