Skip to content

Posts tagged ‘poetry’

Apr 9

5 Comments

Brittany: What I’m Attached To

After reading Kelly’s post from last week, it got me thinking about a similar topic that comes up in the lives of creative women — marketing ourselves. I’ve been to a couple of writer’s conferences now, and every one has stressed the importance of having a presence — taking advantage of any and all social networking opportunities, becoming active in the writing community at large, and creating an identity in cyberspace. Then in this month’s Writer’s Digest, six pages are devoted to Christina Katz’s article on building a “power platform.”  A strong platform, Katz says, includes an author’s Web presence, classes taught, media contacts, articles  published, public speaking services, and any other means available to make an author’s name known.

Lately, I’ve also become much more aware of where my name is and what it’s attached to. I Google myself periodically (am I the only one who does this?), so I know that my name is attached to my master’s thesis, the three playwriting awards I’ve won, and blog posts about my novel-in-progress. But my name is not attached to any short stories or poetry, and this frustrates me. I’m frustrated because while these aren’t my favorite forms of writing, I feel quite confident that if I just put my mind to it, I could write both, and write them well. Then I could submit them to literary magazines and develop the “street cred” that eludes unpublished novelists and playwrights.

The South Carolina Writer’s Workshop is the main literary arts organization in South Carolina. They put on the yearly writer’s conference, sponsor the Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Awards, and publish the Petigru Review, a literary anthology. I’ve joined the organization, attended conferences, and won two Carrie McCray awards. All that’s left is being published in the Petigru Review, at which point, in my own mind, I will have achieved state of South Carolina superstardom.

The deadline for submissions is April 30, and a week ago, when I got the last reminder e-mail, I thought to myself, “Oh, easy peezy. I can whip up a couple of submissions. How hard can it be?”

Oh Lord, please deliver me from my unfailing optimism…

I started re-working the Sam/Squirrel story for a nice nonfiction piece, but it’s still incomplete because 1) I’ve never written any kind of nonfiction before and it was stressing me out and 2) I got this truly compulsive desire to write a poem about a diphtheria epidemic that killed two of my great-great grandfather’s sisters on the same day (who also happened to be  the same approximate ages as Sam an John at the time).  A week later, I’m still working on it. It’s a horrible, stark, Spoon River-esque kind of poem and I have the worst of the three stanzas to go. I have done so much research on the topic that I’m almost too shell-shocked to continue. And it certainly hasn’t helped that John ran a high fever all last week and seemed seriously ill, or that Sam developed a nasty finger infection that required antibiotics. Writing about dying children while my own children were fighting illnesses of their own brought my little poem a bit too close to home.

But despite all my reasons for not wanting to write it, it is coming along, and that makes me feel good. It’s a beautiful poem, and something that I’d like to have my name attached to.

Apr 7

1 Comment

National Poetry Month: A poem a day

Celebrate National Poetry Month with Poets and Writers‘ Masters of Verse, a free poem each day during the month of April. All featured work is from an iconic member of the (real-life) dead poets’ society.

I do find that poetry and stress seem to be incompatible activities. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, breathe deeply and read a stanza or two. Ah, that’s more like it…

Mar 25

5 Comments

3/25 Weekly creativity contest winner

“Spring equinox” seems like a fitting contest prompt, seeing as we’ll be taking a little hiatus from the weekly contest: change and renewal. Beautiful entries this week — enjoy!

Our winner is Rebecca Coll. Rebecca writes: “As soon as saw what the prompt was for this week, I knew exactly what I was going to do… a dos-à-dos binding. This is a particular bookbinding technique that binds two books together with a shared ‘back’ cover. The two books are therefore both individual and half of a greater whole, much the same as the equinox: equal night. Half night, half day. Following are photos of my equinox-inspired dos-à-dos journal. Two books, each with six signatures (sections) to represent the six months from equinox to equinox, bound together to make one year-long diary. Each signature has 32 pages, which is approximately one page per day (you have to have multiples of 4 when bookbinding, so I couldn’t get the math to work out perfectly). Both ‘books’ are bound in leather with bookcloth onlays and the spines sewn in a button-hole technique using both green and brown cord — for spring and fall. The vernal equinox book is in blue leather with a colorful graphic depicting spring. The autumnal equinox book is bound in black suede (leather glued on backwards with the ‘soft’ side showing). The cover of this book shows a tree having lost it’s leaves. Together with both books one can record a year’s worth of memories: equinox to equinox.” Wow, is all I can say, Rebecca! An absolutely brilliant interpretation of the prompt. Your $10 amazon.com gift certificate has been issued.

dos-a-dos

darkside

blueside

 

From Cathy Coley:

Spring Equinox

The camellias are a winter bloom,
usually December, but this year
they bloomed in March. The ground
didn’t freeze until then,
and one shot of snow
moved the blooms to the Equinox.
The two red bushes dominate
and make the white one blush
as daffodils struggle,
and crocus never awoke.

The season of waking,
My daughter begins to walk
while first blooms of burgeoning
mingle my teen son’s drawing away
and drawing toward
the streets and halls filled
with cucumber perfumed
tresses and new curves
unsweatered,
scent of new skin.
3192009spring-015

 

From Karen Winters: “Malibu Creek Afternoon Hike,” 12 x 16 oil on canvas. Karen writes:

“This new landscape oil painting celebrates the arrival of spring in the Santa Monica Mountains in Malibu Creek State Park, one of my favorite local inspirations. The hills will only stay this beautiful green color for a short while but it’s glorious while it lasts. Soon, the greens will dry to a golden brown, and the desert look will be revealed. I learned something interesting about Southern California’s desert nature while watching a show on geology a little while ago. Before the Sierra Nevada range formed due to compression of the North American and Pacific tectonic plates, California received abundant summer rainfall, just like the rest of what is now the United States. When the mountain range rose, this changed weather patterns and So. Cal became a desert. To get the rain back we’ll have to wait quite some time for the mountains to age. But since the plates continue to compress and mountains continue to rise, that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Perhaps one day we’ll have Californian Alps or Himalayan-size peaks. I won’t be around to paint them, but I can imagine that they’ll look wonderful in springtime.”

malibu-creek-painting-b

 

dsc05371From Jen Johnson: “As I was thinking about this week’s prompt, I found myself reflecting on hibernation, awaking to sunshine. This week I’m also in the thick of preparations for my son’s fourth birthday (his party is Saturday and his actual birthday is March 31st). My little boy loves all things serpentine — two of his most significant attachment objects are rubber snakes that he has named ‘Stuxey’ and ‘The Other Stuxey.’ I knew I wanted to make my son something special for his birthday, and so all these things combined to inspire this morning’s project: ‘Spring’ the snake. ‘Spring’ is made from fleece, which is a fairly new material for me; I find it is very forgiving and I’m enjoying working with it! dsc05370She is the second stuffy that I’ve made from my own pattern. The stripes were the most fun! I brought her outside to take advantage of the sunshine for the picture, and happily our overgrown oxalis provided a suitable backdrop. (Wouldn’t be spring out here without the oxalis explosion!) And for a more literary –- and literal — approach to this week’s prompt, you can check out my blog post on the Equinox itself: an old poem that I found in the files. It’s posted here.”

 

This weekly contest has been a real pleasure, everyone. Please keep those creative juices flowing, and don’t feel shy about sending your creative endeavors in for posting. We love random acts of creativity!

In case you missed any of the prompts we’ve had during the past 47 weeks, here’s the list, ordered from most recent to oldest:

1.    Spring equinox
2.    Map
3.    Dance
4.    Light
5.    Eyes
6.    Box
7.    Cookies
8.    Clock
9.    Hope
10.   Wool
11.    Snow
12.    Stars
13.    Noel
14.    Gift
15.    Waiting
16.    Fire
17.    Thanksgiving
18.    Silver
19.    Quilt
20.    Self-portrait
21.    Hands
22.    Dream
23.    Apples
24.    Tears
25.    Autumn
26.    The notebook
27.    Dinnertime
28.    The guitar
29.    My favorite shoes
30.    Sunflowers
31.    The wedding
32.    Chocolate
33.    Circles
34.    Vacation
35.    Beauty
36.    Chinese restaurant
37.    My mother’s house
38.    Independence Day
39.    Wings
40.    At 3:00 am
41.    Margaritas
42.    The crows
43.    The ocean
44.    The last time you kissed me
45.    Little black dress
46.    A cup of coffee
47.    View from the window

Mar 18

5 Comments

3/18 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Musical intro for this week’s contest post: “Get out the map, get out the map and lay your finger anywhere down. We’ll leave the figuring to those we pass on the way out of town.” (Lyrics from one of my favorite Indigo Girls songs.)

Several lovely entries for this week’s creativity contest. The winner is Brittany Vandeputte, who is clearly entering the freakishly creative phase. Brittany, we all want to know where your creative mojo is coming from!

Brittany writes: “I had fun with this one Miranda! This week’s entry is a paper doll. My best friend (who’s Australian) and her family are coming to the US next month. I haven’t seen her since 1994 and have never met her three-year-old daughter, Mackenzie. They are planning a coast-to-coast, two-month whirlwind tour of the country and the prompt made me think of them immediately. I wondered if there would be any way to help Mackenzie orient herself, and teach her a little bit about what she was seeing in the process. I was struck with this idea to commemorate each of the stops on their trip.”

Here is Brittany’s description of the images she sent in:

  • The doll’s body is made from an Apian Compass Rose (with the face of a porcelain doll I found online).
  • Her first dress is made from a map of North America. With it, as well as the others, I let natural boundaries shape the design.
  • The second dress is a topographical map of Mt. Ranier.
  • The third is a geologic map of SC.
  • The fourth is the park map of Disney World.
  • The fifth is a satellite map of California.
  • And the sixth commemorates the ports we’ll visit on the cruise we’ll meet on — and is a world atlas map of the Caribbean Sea.”

bv_dolls

 

From Jen Johnson: “I have to say, as I pondered this week’s prompt, I kept coming back to Elizabeth Bishop’s take on ‘The Map,’ which I’ve always admired immensely.  With that in the forefront of my mind, I found myself quite unable to come up with something new.  I especially admire her gentle query: ‘Are they assigned, or can the countries pick their colors?’ (Here’s a copy of the poem, if you’re not familiar with it.) So I’d all but given up on having a submission, but then I remembered a VERY old poem, written in a light-yet-serious mood in the early years of my marriage. So I’m sending it in, just for fun. Looking forward to what others have this week!”

Poem, as I Try to Put Pieces Together

“She likes to stretch from England to Brazil,”
you say, while fingering a cardboard piece
of ocean, land, or sky. I hold it still
between our fingers, as I match the crease
that curves from blue to green along the edge
with several jagged gaps here in the map.

Because the cat refused to move, I wedge
the piece we hold into an empty gap
beneath her grey and furry tail. “It’s land.
It fits. Now Britain is complete,” I say.
Of course I realize the notion’s grand,
misleading, silly. For there is no way
this puzzle will complete a single thing.

Much less the world. In fact, I feel like Greek
Penelope–by day the pieces cling
together, but by night I let them seek
destruction of the pattern. Them? The cats.

I swear they’re planning feline schemes to tear
the world apart–two fuzzy democrats
demanding equal rights, each her own chair,
our full attention. Yes, when we are through
with playing god, with this our paper world,
I’m sure our world will have a hole or two;
these cats will sit with tails all tucked and curled
into a satisfied I told you so,
and they will never tell where pieces hide.

So we will forget missing Morocco,
holes in Antarctica, each gap we tried
to remember to fill. Perhaps someday
we will find dusty pieces in corners.
For now we will tear up the bluish-grey
oceans to pieces of paper waters,
break England apart, put bits of Brazil
in a cracked, cardboard box in a closet,
and we will map out each other, until
we find room for cats, chaos, and secret
blank holes in the puzzle. Oh, yes. We will.

 

From Cathy Coley: “i think it’s done. thanks for the inspiration. honestly, this could be a whole memoir full of adventures!”

Maps
I grew up on what seems like one long road trip. Summers spent boiling in the back of a station wagon throughout the Seventies and beyond in both directions in time, back into the Sixties and up into the Eighties. Mom’s Parliaments’ and later those long brown Mores’ smoke blown into the back seat by the cracked window, rather than out it, as her theory dissolved in practice. She never listened to us when we said we couldn’t breathe or were getting carsick from the lack of viable oxygen. She would pop the still burning butt out the window before vacuum sealing the tiny wing window which made our ears constrict and burst from the pressure, especially when we took a mountain route. Hands over my ears, I watched the fiery butt fly by, sending off sparks at seventy-five miles per hour or more, and imagined the kids in the back of the pickup behind us, or the couple in the convertible, or the cut-away hood of a suped-up hot-rod, or the dry roadside grasses and trash bursting into flames, ignited by my mother’s careless discard. But it was the Seventies, and even with the crying native public service announcements and ‘give a hoot, don’t pollute’ campaigns on television, the roadways were littered from car windows far more than my mother’s butts, and I believe everyone’s mother smoked. There’s a certain smell I still smell in certain roadside stops in Virginia, of old cigarettes, linoleum and sealed in broken down air-conditioning, barbeque, hot dog, melting chocolate, Cheetos, Coppertone, pork rinds, potato chips, Coca-cola, Mr. Pibb, birch beer, bologna, egg salad, and old sweat that brings me right back to my childhood. It’s not a great aroma, but it is the perfume of my youth, travelling southward, circa 1976.

My extended family lived in Georgia and Florida, and a few in North Carolina on my father’s side. My parents were traitors who had crossed the Mason-Dixon Line to raise their family. We were the first generation in at least three hundred years, on both sides, and cousins of Robert E. Lee. My younger brother, born in Connecticut was ‘that damn Yankee’ as dubbed by my maternal grandfather and uncles. So we travelled every summer to visit the rest of us Down South. We did so for some Christmases, too. Preparations for the trip included long consultations with Rand-McNally on our kitchen counter, flipping the pages from state to state to determine the best route this time. Would we take a more coastal route and stop over in Virginia Beach or other resort beach zone? Or is the mountain route through the Blue Ridge on Skyline drive our preference this time? Maybe an altered western route across the Smokeys instead, so we can stop over at my father’s old Georgia Tech fraternity brother’s place in North Carolina, rather than with Great Aunt Alma and Uncle Jack, who had a 1922 Model A Ford with an A-Ooga! horn to squeeze and a houseful of antiques.

First we rode in our old Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser with the windows on top, I would lay down in the ‘way back’ or in the back seat and stare up at the passing clouds and stars and wave to the truckers high up in their perches at the front of their megatons of steel and whatever they hauled inside, so they’d blow their horns as they passed. We had these windows in the car ceiling way before the concept of a sunroof came into fashion. After that car’s engine blew, with my mother, younger brother and me in the car, downtown, hometown, Connecticut with real estate agents chasing after us yelling “Fire!” the day before one of our journeys, the dealership lent us a green station wagon that stopped running smack-dab in the middle of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. My father coasted in neutral from hovering over a river past New Jersey, and drifted us onto the roadside with minimal embankment in Delaware. I remember lunching on boiled eggs and hot Peter Pan peanut butter and Welch’s Grape Jelly sandwiches, chased by Coca-cola, and Wise potato chips, for what seemed like hours, as I already needed to go to the bathroom before the bridge, as we waited for the Triple A guy to tow us somewhere for repair. The whir-whizz constant of traffic so much louder and the wind from each vehicle’s pass nearly knocked me over. I was always a puny kid. My mother often said she was sure I would blow away in a strong wind one of these days.

After that trip, my parent’s purchased a Pontiac Grand Safari station wagon with a 455 V-8 and plenty of walnut-grained vinyl veneer. This station wagon lasted us through many more trips, and my high school driving years, when I’d pile all my friends and then some into it to party-hop all over town at whoever’s parents were out of town for the weekend, and have everyone back before my curfew, drunk as skunks, but home safe at a decent hour. Their mothers all loved me. I, however, was straight and in by midnight, mom waiting up, cigarette burning next to her, while she dozed by the light of the television, waiting for me to check in, check my breath, with a ‘goodnight, mom’ kiss on her cheek before heading upstairs.

But that Pontiac Grand Safari with the 455 V-8 lead us to Georgia and Florida and back, mountain routes, coastal routes, down to Orlando where my paternal grandmother lived, Ft Lauderdale and Daytona Beach for fun in the sun, and even gulf-side to Panama City Beach. It carried us on trips to Maine and Vermont for skiing and all the way down the East Coast, hot as blazes, crayons melting in the floorboard with the chocolate. I remember stopping in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, Myrtle Beach, you name it, if it was in Eastern Standard Time, we saw it as kids. My father was never too keen on stopping anywhere for too long, and if we wanted a side trip, one of us navigated from the atlas in our lap, flipping pages from state to state, squeezed in the middle of that front bench seat between Mom and Dad. The other two, listening to The Eagles in the way back, on the Panasonic handheld pushbutton tape recorder, with nothing to do but pretend to be Bonnie and Clyde on the lam from the coppers, read, doodle or watch the trees, cows, hills, cars and sky go by for hours and days on end at a steady 75 miles per hour.

 

From me (Miranda): I recently listened to this old podcast interview with Keri Smith, which got me thinking about the creative inheritance of childhood. Lately I’ve been thinking about work that links to my past. The piece I created for the map prompt is about documenting my creative birthright; my origins (the map is of a town in England that was one of my early homes) and what I was given by my mother, who is what I could call reflexively creative. The past can been seen as a map from which we navigate the future. The sunflower is a personal icon of sorts, and in this instance echoes the compass icon used on many maps. This piece isn’t quite what I set out to do, but it is what it is. (Kind of like me.)

creative_birthright_lo_res

 

This week’s prompt: “Spring Equinox”
Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, March 24, 2009. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Mar 11

5 Comments

3/11 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Care to dance? A lovely array of submissions for this week’s creativity contest. Our winner is Cynthia Platt, for a beautiful poem. Cynthia sent in this lovely note: “Here’s an entry for you for the ‘Dance’ category. Dancing has always been a big — and joyful — part of my life. Now it’s joyful part of my nearly-three-year-old daughter’s life, too. Thanks for taking a read, and for hosting the blog, which I read, and take inspiration from, regularly!” Congratulations, Cynthia. Your $10 amazon.com gift certificate has been issued.

Dance Party

Last night we had a dance party.
A dance party
used to mean something
concrete to me.
Late nights,
flashing lights,
speakers pumping out
bass at outrageous decibels.
I am older now, though,
and she is so young.
Early nights have replaced late,
a brightly lit living room has displaced
the dark, pulsing club.
Last night, her music played
sweet and low and lovely.
I am older now,
and she is so young.
The three of us danced
around the living room,
laughing.
“It’s a dance party, Mummy!” she trilled,
joy suffusing her voice.
And it was.
Last night we had a dance party.
A dance party means something concrete to me.

 

From Jen Johnson, a fabulous sonnet: “Submitting an oldie-but-goodie this week, something that came immediately to mind with the ‘dance’ prompt. It was written back when I was in my sonnet phase and really fascinated with poetic form and structure. (A fascination that I still have, though these days I have less of the required focus to put it into practice!) The idea originally sparked when I realized that the nursery rhyme for which it is named has fourteen words — so I wanted to see how it would work as an ‘acrostic sonnet.’ The term refers to the fact that this can be read two ways: top to bottom, like an acrostic, by reading the first words of each line ‘down’ the poem; and also left to right, like a typical poem.”

Ashes, Ashes — We All Fall Down

Ring me round with laughing children, dancing
around and around in the pale daffodils,
the yellow, nodding flowers chancing spring.
Rosy sky wipes wet hands down her skirts, spills
pockets brimming with sultry, heavy air.
Full puddles standing in the glossy street
of gravel-gilded pavement call for bare
posies of children’s toes — pink, tiny, sweet.

Ashes of memory, now — bitter, gray.
Ashes only, no longer the burning.
We slog through this muddy field on May Day,
all alone, sodden socks blistering, yearning.

Fall just once to your naked knees. Stumble
down and stop. Now rise, kindled and humble.

 

From Cathy Coley: “So, when I saw ‘dance’ was the prompt, I knew I could take this in a 1,000 different directions. However, very quickly the idea of dancing on my father’s feet as a little girl, and Baby C dancing on her Daddy’s feet popped up strongly and quickly from the bottom of that full pool. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get good light, dh and baby together all at once since last Wednesday. This is the result of the photos, which I had hoped would inspire a generational poem or something. Alas, bad photos don’t make for good inspiration, especially on Tuesday morning staring at the day’s deadline. But it was great to remember how I felt as a little girl dancing on my father’s feet. And I got a nice shot in of Daddy kissing his girl.”

babycdancing

 

From me (Miranda): When I was in high school, I won a competition for designing the T-shirts and sweatshirts for an annual dance event. (The win was one of about two happy moments related to my high school years.) I loved drawing in pen and ink, an interest that I inherited from my mother, who supplied me with a homemade light box. The final design is packed in a box somewhere in my attic, but I do have some similar sketches around somewhere — alas I spent nearly an hour tearing apart my just-unpacked house in search of the scrap of paper I was looking for, to no avail.

danceI have a weakness for images of dancers. I’ve always admired the beauty of a high arch. Many dancers have exquisite feet — and many non-dancers have exquisite feet, too. Whenever I notice a person with exceptional arches, I can’t help but ask if she’s a dancer. Unless someone is willing to intentionally point her feet for you (which is a bit awkward to ask of a stranger), the only way to really assess her arches is to casually observe her foot when it’s extended — say, if she’s sitting on the floor with her legs out straight, one crossed over the other, which tends to force a gentle pointing of the foot. Or, if someone is sitting in a chair cross-legged and has a natural turnout, you might be able to observe her arch when she absently points her foot during conversation. Not that I am utterly obsessed with feet or anything, really! Despite many years of ballet, and dancerly aspirations, I do not have beautiful arches — as you can tell from this photo of me en pointe. Just not that impressive. (Good thing that “arch augmentation” isn’t something that most plastic surgeons offer, or I’d have done it by now.)

I still remember the smell of new toeshoes with fondness — that intoxicating perfume of glue, leather, and satin. While I don’t consider myself a stage mother, I admit that I did drag my daughter to ballet lessons at the age of 5. Ballet just wasn’t her thing, however. She never cared for it, so I let it go after a few weeks. Now, I peruse my old copy of Allegra Kent’s The Dancer’s Body Book and Suzanne Farrell’s autobiography, hoping to manifest a little grace in my life, even with my regular old, Plain Jane arches. (Photo credit Jack Foley.)

 

This week’s prompt: “Map”
Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, March 17, 2009. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Mar 4

8 Comments

3/04 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Beautiful submissions for this week’s creativity contest on the prompt “light.” Our winner is Cathy Coley, for a haiku image pairing. I love the simplicity of what Cathy did — just showing up and looking into the every day. Congratulations, Cathy — your $10 amazon.com gift certificate is on its way.

 

in the new morning light
quiet and promise
are all I need to write

 

morning-light-001

 

From Juliet Bell: “This is an oil painting I completed recently. It is painted from a photo I took of a morning glory blossom outside my kitchen door after an August rain. I changed the orientation of the light to appear to be coming from inside the blossom. It is entitled ‘Glory After a Morning Rain.'” [Editor’s note: OK, so this BEAUTIFUL painting is actually hanging on the wall in my new library….]

glory-after-the-morning-rain

 

From Amy Grennell, a beautifully textured pair of images — one an altered version of the other? I wasn’t able to ask Amy what media she used — Amy, please tell us!

light-alt

light-alt2

 

From Kelly Warren: “Here are two photos for you….one of one of lights of my life, and one of the light of her life.  I love the way the light plays off both of them in these pictures, highlighting Sarah’s jumble of lovely red curls and Bunny’s pensive thoughts.”

bunny-portrait-for-cc

sarah-and-bunny

 

From me (Miranda), a haiku image pair:

 

Inside the new house
we orient ourselves to
southern exposure

dsc_0104

 

This week’s prompt: “Dance”
Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, March 10, 2009. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Feb 25

6 Comments

2/25 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Ah, the eyes have it! Lovely submissions for this week’s creativity contest. Our winner is Elizabeth Beck, for this beautiful collage. Elizabeth writes: “i just finished this collage this week …. and intentionally left out the eyes …. to leave it all more ambiguous and mysterious ….. so … for my eyes entry, i give you no eyes!” (I just love your work, Elizabeth, and I’m anxious to try my hand at collage with the SIX BOXES of potential collage materials I gathered up while packing for my move.) Congratulations, Elizabeth — your $10 amazon.com gift certificate has been issued.

100_79311

 

From Karen Winters, a watercolor painting. Karen writes: “I have always admired the way Egyptian women were portrayed in sculpture and painting, so I decided to do a closeup watercolor just featuring the eyes of an exotic beauty. Unlike the ancient paintings that were very stylized and graphic-looking, I chose to represent the eyes in a more realistic manner. The kohl that Egyptian women and men used for distinctive outlining served more than a decorative purpose. Originally made from the soot derived from burning sandalwood paste, kohl served as a medicinal aid and protection against strong sun. Modern preparations may contain lead, so caveat emptor.”

eyes-3x5

 

From Jen Johnson, a poem. Jen writes: “My submission is a quick little poem dashed off during naptime (because that’s all the time I had this week!) based on something I seem to remember reading somewhere a long time ago. Your prompt reminded me of it — not sure if it’s scientific fact or not (and a quick google search with the kids in my lap can’t confirm it) but I like the idea anyway.”

Moongaze

They say that the dark side of the moon,
The side blind to human eyes,
Has a gigantic crater, so big it could be seen
With ease from our own Earth —

If ever we could see what can’t be seen.
It would look like an enormous lunar eye,
Peering down at us each night.
The huge hole a dark iris, pale moondust sclera.

What myths would have been made,
What stories spun, what gods imagined,
If each night we looked up to see
A changeable gaze staring down from the sky?

 

From Rebecca Coll, a painting that she created this week as a gift to her husband on their anniversary. Rebecca writes: “I stretched the theme of ‘eye’ to include how we use it and experimented with the whole optical illusion thing. I figured after 19 years a marriage is about so much more than you can see on the surface. It’s about who we are and the love we have shared. To show this I painted a tree (growth, stability, branches for our independent passions, etc.) using both of our profiles to create the trunk. Then, up in the tree I added 19 hearts for the 19 years… Can you see them all?”

annivtree1

 

From Kelly Warren: “Pure goofiness…the eyes are two of my evil eye pendants.  I’d say this is me after one too many margaritas.” Love it, Kelly!

goofy-eyes

 

From Cathy Coley, a poem:

Eyes

My eldest son’s mossy deep forest green
glow in the sun and mute to wood.
They are the unusual eyes
of my grandfathers,
both of Carolina Cherokee blood.
I wander lost in those eyes
when they look at me.

At a powwow when he was three
a young Mohegan boy of eight
smiled and said,
‘He has the eyes of my tribe,
the eyes of the wolf.’

From boy to boy passed more
than a stick of rock candy.
This is his second early memory
after the red and licorice
ladybug birthday cake.
He has the eyes of a wolf.

My second son’s eyes kaleidoscope
from bright blue to green to slate.
My mostly Irish father’s eyes are aqua green,
Turn to crystal blue, even lavender.
My boys’ father’s Irish eyes switch, too —
Sky eyes clear blue to thunderclouds.
My young son’s eyes are big as the sky.
I can fall into them, and rarely swim back out.

My daughter’s eyes are deep,
clear, warm bullets,
black brown depths of her father and me.
My mother, my grandmother,
his father and generations
back into the hills and across the ocean.
The deep history of continents
collide in our daughter’s eyes —
founders, natives, immigrants,
brown as earth’s rich soil.

Histories upon peoples read
in our children’s eyes.

 

From me (Miranda): A header image that I several months ago — it’s one of my favorites. Naturally, I am enchanted by the eyes of all of my children, but I have to say that Liam (the youngest) has extra depth to his baby blues.

babyeye

 

This week’s prompt: “Light”
Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, March 3, 2009. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Feb 18

7 Comments

2/18 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

It probably wasn’t too difficult to figure out where the “box” prompt came from in this week’s creativity contest. (For anyone not in the know, I just moved!) This week’s winner is Brittany Vandeputte. Brittany writes: “I was inspired for this week’s contest when my brother-in-law finally proposed to his girlfriend yesterday (it wasn’t soon enough for our taste). I thought to myself ‘Cupid must’ve finally knocked some sense into him…’ Then ‘Hmmmm… isn’t our prompt for the week “box”?’ Cupid is approx. 4 inches tall, adapted from Laurie S. Wagner’s Mini Baby Mannequin pattern. He is entirely hand sewn (I hate using a sewing machine) and made from hand tea-dyed flannel, black vinyl, polyester fiberfill, and craft feathers. I embroidered his hair, face, and tattoo and used white embroidery thread for his boxing glove laces. His diaper is made from a scrap of interfacing and a spare safety pin.” Very creative, Brittany — love your pugilist take. Your $10 amazon.com gift certificate has been issued.

cupid221509
 

From Jen Johnson: “My submission this week is a little poem, one of those ‘came to me in the shower’ creations. It was also inspired by the deteriorating ‘playhouse’ that has become a fixture in our dining room over the last few weeks.”

Boxes (Thinking Outside)

Crayon, canyon,
match, mail, window,
gear, strong, jury,
car, kite, music,
ballot, chatter,
soap, Pandora.

Black, juke, sentry,
signal, compass,
sound, snuff, witness,
office, coffin.
Jack’s in, cat’s out.
Cardboard spaceship.

dsc05048

 

From Cathy Jennings, an image created in Adobe Illustrator. Cathy writes: This was fun. ‘Box’ got me thinking about spring cleaning and emotional baggage.”

springcleaningsquares
 

From Cathy Coley, a pair of photographs. Cathy writes: “No better entertainment exists for a baby than a box! S was about the same age Baby C is now in this photo from ten years ago. Look how he adored his big brother! So, yes, I went for the obvious once again. It was nice to break out the old photos! Baby C was too active to get a good shot of her sitting in the box to mimic the old one. I liked this one of her heading in.”

cathy_boxes
 

From Rebecca Coll, a piece just for me! (In the interest of full disclosure, Rebecca is my BFF.) Rebecca writes: “So I wasn’t able to finish (as you can clearly see!), but I figured I’d send it in anyway. The piece is actually going to be your housewarming gift once it’s done — hence my comment earlier about not being in the running to win this week 🙂 . It’s a shadowbox, loosely depicting your family and your new house. I glued the frame and started to place some of the elements (people, your front columns, windows) but I didn’t have a chance to finish and I also need to paint it. It obviously looks very underdone in the raw colors of the board I am using. Trust me, it will look VERY different when it’s done.” (Editor’s note: Look’s like I’M the big winner this week, ladies!)

box1
 
From me (Miranda), a prose piece and photograph:
Moving

All of my wordly possessions, my life in the most mundane terms, wrapped in sheets of gray paper and boxed by strange hands. Hands that had no interest in my bird’s nest diorama, my reams of manuscript pages, my hundreds of books, the many ceramic treasures that my children have created over the years, the quilt that my mother made for me, my prized sugar bowl. Three Guatemalan men packed my house in silence — except for when one of them accidentally pushed a button on a small key-chain found in the kitchen desk: “Dr. Fart.” From the next room, we heard the eruption of laughter.

The hands packed without interest, and perhaps without judgment, although I wonder what the inventory of my household looks like through someone else’s eyes. I catch a glimpse, I think, as I unfurl each carefully wrapped item. I open a thousand presents, sometimes with a smile as I discover a favorite object; sometimes with a sigh as I unwrap yet one more thing that I’m not sure I really want to keep. In the light of a new home and shifting priorities, I wonder why I paid to have it packed and moved. Out it goes.

The mover’s boxes are my appreciated friends, but our friendship is fleeting. As soon as a box is empty, I am anxious to remove it — immediately — from my living space. Each emptied box feels like a significant accomplishment. Box by box, my life comes back to shape, as much as I wish my life weren’t so thoroughly defined by my material goods.

Two days ago, a couple came by and took masses of boxes from the collection in our driveway — mostly flattened, but many bulging full of crumpled newsprint. I was relieved to see most of the boxes go, and glad to know that they would be serving another family rather than heading to the recycling center.

Ten days after moving, there are just a handful of boxes left in my living space. By the end of the coming weekend, those will be gone too. Back to “real” life, out of the box.

Maybe I’ll save a few in the basement, just in case I’m not quite ready….

dsc_0048

 

This week’s prompt: “Eyes”
Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, February 24, 2009. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Feb 4

4 Comments

2/04 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

A quiet week on the creativity contest front. Perhaps the prompt “clock” didn’t set off many bells among Creative Construction readers — or perhaps some of you were hard at work in the February Finish-a-thon. Our winner is Kelly Warren, who sent in a stunning photo, with a lovely explanatory bit. Congratulations, Kelly! Your $10 amazon.com gift certificate is on its way.

Clock’s Tickin’

ford-ttv

Heading south out of Tallahassee on US 319/98 towards the coast, there’s a gathering of old trucks just off the side of the road. Being the intrepid traveler around Tallahassee and its environs, I’ve wondered about this “gathering” for years. They sit there as if on the starting line of some long ago race, all lined up waiting for some invisible spandex-clad starlet to throw down her scarf as the signal to go.

After some recent research, I found finally their origins. They’re are owned by Mr. Homer R. Harvey. He and his father Riley A. Harvey were in the timber, crosstie and turpentine business. They also farmed and raised some cattle and hogs, and the trucks were used in their business operations over the years. Riley died in 1957, and Homer carried the business on into the 1970s. The home on the curve near the trucks is where Homer raised his family. He and his wife Yvonne McLaughlin had four children: Pat, Mike, Dennis and Ouida. Pat now lives in the home on “Homer Harvey Curve.” A few years back Pat and Homer decided to move the old trucks out of the woods and place them closer to the road where they are now. Homer is now 92 and lives with his daughter Ouida just a few miles from the curve. Mike and Dennis both live close by.

The woman at the Wakulla County Chamber of Commerce who helped me with the research, Petra Shuff, told me that there’s a ’54 Ford amongst the gathering that was the first car she remembers steering, sitting in an uncle’s lap. Like Petra’s dream to drive, these old trucks are also a photographer’s dream. I took a series of pictures there recently and played around with a few to great effect, including that ’54 Ford. Clock’s tickin’, Ms. Petra. Been drivin’ lately?

 

From Jen Johnson, a photograph. Jen writes: “A very impromptu submission this week: a photo of our mantle, titled ‘Time and the River’ (yes that is the Wolfe title in the background).”

time-and-the-river

 

From Cathy Coley, a poem and photo pairing. Cathy says, “very silly, i was coming up empty.” Hey, your consistency is always impressive, Cathy!

Clocks

Always ticking
Never sticking
Slowly creeping
Suddenly speeding
Morning in
Evening out
What the heck
Is that all about?

clocks-006

 

From me (Miranda), a haiku:

Clock

The metronome of
life and all I know, music
of our nothingness

 

This week’s prompt: “Cookies”
Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, February 10, 2009. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Jan 28

10 Comments

1/28 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Hope is a beautiful thing. And so is the collection of entries for this week’s creativity contest.

Our winner is book artist Rebecca Coll, who crafted a highly creative piece. Rebecca writes: “I pretty much decided to fall in love with Emily Dickinson’s poetry when I was in the 3rd or 4th grade and learned we had the same birthday… Although I’m not sure I’m as smitten as I used to be, the poem on the attached piece is one I have always liked. It describes hope in such a powerful way — as opposed to the desperate hopes you hear so much about. SO I decided to use that poem as inspiration for a paper cutout pop-up ‘book.’ It’s not really a book, more like a card with a hardback cover…. The outside cover is the Dickinson poem and inside is a gold papercut ‘tree of life’ with a red bird perched on a branch. The tree of life is the symbolic image I used for the ‘soul’ where Dickinson says our hope sits perched. Gold is for the precious nature of our souls and the red of the bird is for the fire and strength of our hopes.”

hope11

hope21

hope3

 

From Terri Fischer, a series of photographs. Terri writes: “The collage entitled ‘hope’ [below] is a collection of photos that I took of a few of my friends while we watched the inauguration. My good friend Sarah is from England, and has been obsessed with the campaign, election, and inauguration of President Obama (I still love saying that!). She hosted an little Inauguration Day party for a group of local moms that were home that day. Sarah is on the right, hand to mouth, likely stifling a sob.”

hope2

“‘Obama2’ [below] is, of course, from the same day. I love this photo because it signifies generations to me–mother, daughter, and baby doll, engaged in this historic moment. I feel that the role mothers play in shaping the future of this country is highly underrated! This photo speaks to me of both hope and responsibility.”

obama2

“‘Broo,’ [below] is a photo of my fourth child. OK, so really, she’s only watching Kung Fu Panda, but doesn’t that sweet little face make you think ‘hope’?”

broo

 

From Brittany Vandeputte, a poem with photographs: Brittany writes, “Again, a silly poem inspired by recent events.”

AN ODE TO A TODDLER BY THE DOG SITTING HOPEFUL BESIDE THE HIGH CHAIR

Please just a nibble.
Please just one bite.
Just a morsel of chicken.
Iʼll catch it mid-flight.
No one will notice.
No one will see.
Theyʼll think you ate your dinner,
When it was actually me!
brittany

 

From Jennifer Johnson, a poem:

Hope (The Thing With Feathers)

Some screams are ones you never will forget.
That day, the cries of raw distress
reminded me of blood on black macadam,
an elbow scraped, a shredded dress,
the gravel ground too hard on naked knees.
The common childhood playground casualties.

I went outside, prepared to cluck and shush
assurance — anything to halt
that run of ragged noise, too full of pain,
too flavored by the angry salt
of tears, too close to language to ignore.

I looked around the park but saw no child.
My ears found her — a wounded crow
was dragging one dark wing and hurling sound
at cats who crouched a pebble’s throw
away from her, tails twitching, inching closer.

I broke the clowder’s circle, scared them off,
but terrified the trembling bird.
She hopped away, still shrieking. I stood still
and willed her quiet. She preferred
to flap her one good wing and curse us all.

What could I do? She was no condor, tern,
or albatross; was neither rare
nor lovely. She was common. Did she know
this? Were her cries akin to prayer?
Her voice alone was keeping her alive:
her almost-human hope that she’d survive.

 

From Marsanne Petty, two entries (again! Go Marsanne); a photograph and a prose piece:

a) “We go to Savannah, Georgia, every year for vacation. We’ve been to the Pirate’s House Restaurant a couple of times. It’s a pretty good restaurant. Anyway, this lantern hangs by the front door, and according to each of the pirates that have taken us on various tours, it was there as a beacon of hope to those on the Savannah River. It may have worked; it may not have. Regardless of the truth of the story or the usefulness of the lantern, it makes for a nice photo.”

hope-lantern

b) Hope

Everyone knows there’s no such thing as a happy ending. She had heard it her whole life, especially from her mother. After three failed marriages and one husband who died, she could agree with her mother that there wasn’t much hope. But that didn’t stop her from trying to believe.

Her first hope was that she would get out of this town. That hadn’t happened, what with the abusive boyfriend and lack of schooling. She supposed, really, that her first hope had been to finish high school and go to college in another town. There. That was a much better clarification of her hope. The school thing hadn’t worked out too well – she ended up spending all of her time with the boyfriend, which in turn, led to a failed relationship and failing out of school. And yet she was still in the same small town, alone.

Her second hope was to give her mother a sense of happiness. The poor woman had been through so much, the husbands, the divorces, the death…. What’s a girl to do to help her mother cope with something like that? That had failed too. Her mother had fallen into a deep depression and was reduced to taking medication to get through the day.

Her third hope was to be an artist. She tried, really, she did. She attempted lovely landscapes on napkins, spare newspapers, bits of paper she could find anywhere. A severe lack of money didn’t exactly lend itself to art. When the landscapes didn’t work, she tried people, buildings, individual flowers. All failures.

So she moved on. Her fourth hope was to learn the history of her family. Where did they come from? What did their odd sounding names mean? Could she find more ancestors of her own – other family members, other than her battered, depressed mother? She questioned her mother, who knew nothing. Her own mother had abandoned her to a nearby family when she was four. She could no longer even recall her own mother’s name. The name of the family? Her mother didn’t remember them either, she was gone from their home by the age of twelve, on the street to fend for herself. Any other relatives, then? No, none that she knew of. What of her father? A vicious snort from her mother. Look at your birth certificate, child. I have no idea who he was. No maternal relatives, no paternal name to trace. Hope number four was dashed.

She hoped to take the money her mother had given her and make it stretch far enough to buy food for the two of them. Enough to last the week, at least. So she took the money and walked to the grocery store, closely tallying what she added to her basket. Like every other week, she came up short, even purchasing the cheapest brands of foods, the most cost efficient packages. She went to the register to pay for her meager collection, another hope ruined. They would be hungry at the end of the week.

Walking back home, it began to sprinkle and she thought of her mother’s words – no happy ending. Hope after hope…all failed. She looked up at the sky to see if the rain was going to get harder before she made it home. A rainbow gleamed down at her, reminding her that there was always hope, and it never hurt to stop hoping for something better.

 

From Cathy Coley, an illustrated prose piece:

Hope’s name is Lucy

epsn0039I love dogs, I grew up with generations of them. For many years living in condos or apartments, I promised my boys, especially K that we would get a dog as soon as we could afford a house. As soon as we moved in, I took them to the local SPCA on a Friday afternoon, near closing to ‘just look.’ The smell of urine and dog and cat fear was everywhere, as it is in these places, even when they are doing their best to find homes for the lost, the lonely, the neglected and the abused. As soon as we walked through the door to the kennels, the first thing we saw adopted us. She was a nervous mangy little cutie we couldn’t get out of our hearts as soon as we saw her. I had envisioned a fluffier, prettier and bigger dog than this tiny bald terrier mix, and we really tried to consider all the others, including puppies we saw, but my heart started racing. I called my husband at work, frantic that we would lose her if he didn’t come immediately with us first thing in the morning. Others stopped at her cage with the “aw” that only the most pathetic can evoke. I really didn’t want to lose her. Neither did K or S. I told the kennel tech we would be back with my husband first thing tomorrow, don’t give her away til we get here! I didn’t sleep at all that night. Of course, my husband was reluctant, but couldn’t turn away from her, either, once he saw her.

I also didn’t want to think I was making a hasty decision. I hoped she really was the best dog for our family. So gave myself a little more than twelve hours to consider bringing a dog with full fledged mange into the house, especially with my beautiful old cat. I didn’t want her to start losing her fur. I had no idea what it would take to get rid of it once we had her home. I learned after taking her to the vet that there are two kinds of mange: a highly treatable and a terrible version that the best thing to do is euthanize the poor creature.

1-21-2008lucy-006When I brought her to the vet, the vet tech looked at her and kept saying how lucky she was and what a wonderful family we must be, etc, but it looked like she probably had the latter version of mange. They sent us home with the treatment for the treatable kind after running tests. We all, the vet tech, the whole staff there, and family crossed our fingers, prayed and hoped. Well, two years, a lot of chewed shoes and otherwise, a lot of escapee chases around the neighborhood later, Lucy is a healthy, slightly spazzy, loveable, beautiful part of our family. After fearing she wouldn’t take well to the baby when she arrived, no one in this house seems to love each other more than Lucy and Baby C. Every time I take her into the vet’s office for a check up, they can’t believe she was adopted, she is healthy, and she’s one of their favorite patients, having come back from nearly completely bald mange to this beautiful shiny coat. Look at the hope in her eyes in the before of her before and after pictures. I know there is a lot of a grander kind of hope in the air these days, but we were hers, she was ours, and with her, hope came to great fruition.

 

From Kelly Warren, a photograph entitled “Hope for a New Day”:

hope

 

From me (Miranda): A poem written as I waited in the car with a sleeping baby while my mother ran into a few stores to take care of errands. A few moments are better than none!

Hope is
an iridescent spider’s web
spun fresh each morning,
delicate,
persistent;
strong enough to catch
the sustenance that flutters by.

Hope hangs in the alcove
silver in early sunlight
waiting

 

This week’s prompt: “Clock”
Use the prompt however you like — literally, or a tangential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 10:00 p.m. eastern time (GMT -5) on Tuesday, February 3, 2009. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) All submissions are acknowledged when received; if you do not receive e-mail confirmation of receipt within 24 hours, please post a comment here. Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Mar 31

Miranda: Celebrate National Poetry Month

borzoiEnjoy reading poetry? Subscribe to a little bit of daily inspiration for the month of April, courtesy of Knopf’s Borzoi Reader:

“Nine years ago we began a Knopf tradition. To celebrate National Poetry Month, we sent a poem a day by e-mail for 30 days to anyone who asked to receive them. Now, with over 25,000 subscribers, we are proud to continue with a whole new series of daily poems. Each weekday, you will receive a poem from some of the best poets in the world including Mark Strand, Sharon Olds, and Laurie Sheck, as well as classics from Langston Hughes, Robert Burns and more.”

To subscribe, visit Knopf’s Poem-a-Day page. (Here’s hoping the editors at Knopf will read the e-mail I just sent them, pointing out that the current year is 2008, not 2007. Oops.) And thanks to Roland for sending me the link!

Newer Entries »