by Christine Swint
From now until midnight one week from today, comments on this post will be open so you can leave a permalink to your blog post for this week’s contribution. Did you write a remembrance? We hope so, but if something else inspired you, we want to read that work, too.
Be sure to check back in for new links; we’re open for a full seven days so people have lots of time to link in. You don’t want to miss those who post later in the week.
New schedule
Tomorrow at midnight (EST, which is -5GMT) we will post the new prompt! Promptly. We promise.
Please, link back here in your posts, either with a hyperlink to Read Write Poem or by using the badge in your post. Sidebar links are great but it helps our “internet health” when you link in every post you contribute to the project. And please add “Read Write Poem” in your tags, if you don’t mind.
For the new folks: Please take a few moments to read the About pages, including our Copyrights page. If you have any questions about the project after reading through those pages, email us at info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org.
by Deb Scott
We know you are ready to post it up … but we’re doing a schedule shiftaroo around here.
So, hold your horses and (or go ahead and post here if you must, just be sure to) come back Sept. 18.
In the meantime, think of all the extra time you have to write! If you don’t find an elegy or remembrance something that speaks to you, try going random — check the sidebar — or look through past articles for some great ideas! Search the site by author, author (ha — you know what I mean), words, most anything.
And enjoy the expansion. How often do you get a little more time?
by Deb Scott
A few weeks ago Tom’s article inspired us (Christine and I) to ask you to help us write a rengu. Below is that result, so far. (The linked first word leads you to the contributor’s blog.)
Hot pavements –
littered with
tired bees.
Sunshine on fresh grass
I am stuck inside
writing poetry.
A meandering of ants
to a forgotten popsicle.
Dry dust stirred up by traffic
unwelcome inside the store.
Sweet scent of honey
overlaid with muskiness –
melted candy bar.
Offices fake coolness, but
hot red skin remembers sun.
Peeled by a loved one –
those seven humid nights
spent in Acapulco.
Miramar beach trash
seagulls sorting through the bones.
Old town back alley, chill dawn
numb hungry dumpster-divers.
Leftovers telling
thrown out a moving window
yesterdays old news.
Papers full of fried potato
left on a bench;
pigeons flocking.
Little girl squeals with delight
as feathers burst to the sky.
Snowflakes: delighted schoolboys
cheer the hope of canceled school.
In the upside down
seasons change
without us.
* * *
Our renku is 33 lines. We were aiming for 36 lines, but we hardly kept to formal rules, did we? If anyone wants to add a three three-line hokku to finish it up, leave it in the comments. (News: Yay!, Brian. We have our hokku to finish the renku, quite nicely, I might add.) And, if you want to collaborate with someone else, leave a link here — or go leave a comment on someone’s blog and have a conversation!
Enjoy! And come back on the 18th for the Get Your Poem On for Christine’s prompt about elegies and remembrances.
by Christine Swint
Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.
–Robert Frost
Each culture has within its collective memory those moments which call for heightened awareness. Sometimes we remember historic events with great joy, but all too often the events trigger grief and mourning.
Poets often write ballads, songs, odes, epitaphs, elegies and elegiac verse to commemorate significant historic events, as they themselves view them, on a personal level. For an overview of occasional verse, you can refer to ‘get the lead out: mark your calendars!’, my article from a few weeks ago.
Poets (website for the American Academy of Poets) details the specifics of the elegy, a type of formal verse we inherited from the ancient Greeks that originally was a sad song or verse written in response to the death of a person or group. The Poetry Archive also has a simple explanation of the modern elegy you might like to read, with sample poems.
Over time, in English, the elegy has evolved into what we now call elegiac verse. Poets have disregarded the more formal elements that traditionally were expected, and have instead chosen to write poems about loss, grief and lament, both for specific people, groups — and even the environment — in a wide variety of forms. (For more information on this topic, as well as a list of example poems, you can read about elegiac verse at Poets.)
The prompt this week is to write an elegiac poem for a person, a group, an event, a pet or even for having the blues – anything you choose. The poem can be a tribute, a lament, a farewell song or a remembrance of a past event.
If you’d like to collaborate, you can try one of these suggestions:
- With a partner, choose an event you both want to remember or mourn, and alternate verses.
- Write eight lines about a specific person or event. Your partner also writes eight lines about the same subject. Mix the lines together randomly, then revise to make an integral poem.
- Write a song. One poet can write the verse, the other the refrain.
- Choose a painting about an historic event with another poet, and alternate your lines, writing to the painting.
This week we will give you a little more time to compose your thoughts, to collaborate with a writing partner, to write your remembrances. Come back next Thursday, Sept. 18.
We are making a schedule change during this time, and if you can’t remember the specifics, don’t worry, we’ll leave a note in the sidebar for easy reference.
by Carolee Sherwood
I love the saying, “Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.” It’s more colloquial than carpe diem, and it’s a cowboy version of laisser-faire.
It’s also a very colorful, concise way to say, “Do what you want when the mood strikes you,” and “If you have something at your disposal you can use, go right ahead.”
As poets, we can appreciate the need and the urge to make hay while the sun shines (to borrow another colloquialism). In other words, when an idea comes, write it down quick! Capture it! Don’t let it get away!
The real answer to the current Read Write Poll — “Where do you write most of your poems?” — is “anywhere and everywhere I can.” The real answer isn’t at the computer, in my journal, on notepads, on scrap paper, on post-it notes, on napkins, receipts and other mismatched items, on the back of my hand or in book margins. It’s “all of the above.”
But since we’re instigators here at Read Write Poem, we made you choose only one, and at press time, almost half of us write most frequently on our computers.
With so many of us being bloggers, I suppose that’s no big surprise, so let’s use the comment section to set ourselves free from the constraints of staking claim a single favorite writing tool. Tell us all the places you write.
Tell us what lengths you’ve gone to in the past to remember an idea until you could write it down. How long did it take? Did you have to ask someone for a pen or a Kleenex? Do you get up in the middle of the night and struggle with the notepad on the nightstand? Do you grab envelopes off the passenger’s seat and write while you drive?
As poets, we are both cunning and practical. I can’t wait to hear how the two conspire to compel you to write at the most inconvenient places and times!
Here’s how the poll dance works: We post a poll and let it ride for a week and a half, and then I’ll talk a little bit about the topic and the results. The poll will stand for a few days after that to allow additional participation. The rotation gives each poll two weeks in the white-hot spotlight.
<img style=”vertical-align:bottom;border:0px;margin:0 0 0 5px;padding:0 0 0 0″ src=”http://readwritepoem.org/files/2009/07/splat-ender1.jpg” alt=”" width=”20″ height=”20″ />by Carolee Sherwood
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read write poem news- read write poem napowrimo anthology
June 20, 2010 | 1:36 pmThe Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Anthology is still in production. Selection, placement, layout and copyediting are taking longer than anticipated. Thank you for your patience. I hope to have the piece completed in July. For those who have emailed asking if they can be included, the May 7 deadline for submission of work stands. Those who met that deadline will be included. Please check the post on this site listing who I received submissions from by that date. If you submitted your work by the May 7 deadline in accordance with our guidelines and your name is not listed, send an email to info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org.
- read write poem napowrimo anthology
May 5, 2010 | 3:09 pmRemember that Friday* is the deadline for submitting work to the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Anthology. Check out the guidelines for submission in the main column (to the left). On May 8, we’ll post a news item listing everyone we’ve received work from. If you submitted work and your name is not on that list, please let us know. Thanks!
*I initially said “tomorrow,” but I meant to say “Friday.”
- napowrimo congratulations, and a reminder
April 24, 2010 | 12:05 pmIt’s the final week of the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge! Just 7 days left. With that, a reminder that Read Write Poem will culminate with the anthology featuring work from those who complete the challenge. A post with details for submitting to the anthology will be published May 1. Be sure you remove any information from the site that you want preserved — such as group content and personal messages. Those elements of the site will be removed May 1 as well. The main site will remain up as an archive.
- ‘underlife’ tour at january gill o’neil’s blog
April 20, 2010 | 8:11 pmJanuary Gill O’Neil’s virtual book tour has moved to her site and is underway now. Check out the lineup at Poet Mom.
 Archive for read write poem news »
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thank you and farewell As of May 1, 2010, Read Write Poem is no longer active.
In late May, an anthology featuring work from those who completed the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge will be published here and on issuu.com.
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