by Carolee Sherwood and Jill Crammond Wickham
It’s September! We can’t believe summer is over, and we can’t believe it’s time already for our second poetry mini-challenge! (If you’ve signed on to Read Write Poem in the last few weeks or if you missed the first challenge, you’re welcome to visit the original post for background.)
The short version
A mini-challenge is a poetry-writing, poetry-reading or poetry-process prompt that you respond to each day for a set number of days. The idea isn’t to warm up the poetry muscles, it’s to feel the burn. Go deeper. Explore further. Pass the place you may have stopped initially. See what comes next. And as if that weren’t juicy enough, you do all of it with the support and encouragement of the other crazy hardworking Read Write Poem members who take on the challenge.
This month’s mini-challenge
Eavesdrop. Put yourself in places where you can overhear other people’s conversations: buses, coffee shops, grocery stores, waiting areas. Tune in to engines running, dishes clanking, papers shuffling. Mother Nature is fair game, too. Listen to the noises she’s making as the seasons gear up for a change. Keep a notebook on hand so you can grab all sorts of sounds and words (including full lines of dialogue) throughout your day.
Every day for five days, write a poem inspired by the sounds and voices you’ve noted. Whenever you can, infuse your writing with sound — help us hear what you hear how you hear it. Engage our ears! If you want to, you can write your five poems as a series, or you can write five poems that have nothing to do with one another.
As you write, visit the forums for the September Poetry Mini-Challenge. They’re marked #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5 — one for each poem you write for this challenge. Jump into the forums and post links to your poems (or the text of the poems themselves if you don’t have a blog). Try to make it all the way to #5 and visit the forums to cheer each other on.
Note: Please save the comments section of this post for discussion on or questions about the process. The poems and links go in the forums associated with the Poetry Mini-Challenge group, located here.
Carolee Sherwood is a painter, mixed-media artist and poet. This moody mother of three boys shares her writing at her site, Carolee Sherwood, and is a senior contributor and columnist for Read Write Poem.
Jill Crammond Wickham has discovered that the frantic pace of motherhood has driven her to write more, not less. Jill writes at Mom Trying to Write and is a senior contributor and columnist for Read Write Poem.
Ohhh, I like this prompt. Will be listening come tomorrow morning…
Hey Carolee and Jill, this is a great challenge!
I love the idea of using found dialogue in a poem. Now I’ll have to get out of the house.
nathan, don’t blame us for loosing you on the world.
julie, i’m glad you like the prompt! should be fun!
I’m excited for this!
My job is pretty perfect for this prompt. (:
Fortune cookie from lunch today:
Listen these next few days to your friends to get answers you seek.
Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
September 1st, 2009 at 7:59 pm
That’s great!
Looking forward to trying to include conversation snippets from 7th graders…might be interesting.
Sounds great…leaving for Florence tomorrow…should be able to gather much material…airport..restaurants….on the plane….will be listening and gathering…
[...] make me fall behind in the challenge. This is poem #2 in response to Read Write Poem’s September Mini-Challenge. It was actually the first that I started writing for this challenge, but the second one to be [...]
Thank goodness for this challenge! I’ve been long looking for an answer to the following question I often get: “Dude, why can’t you mind your own business?” or, “Dude, why are you leaning your head into our bus seat?”
Thanks Carolee and Jill.
Nice challenge:)
Sounds like a lot of fun
this really is a great challenge, and I love how you can eavesdrop on mother nature, or whatever. i have to say the more i think about it the more it seems so many poems are the products of eavesdropping – listening to a dog bark, a river, the rain, the neighbors screaming, etc.
I work in a grocery store. I try not to hear.
dave, i love your comment! i’ve been known to shoosh my own family members b/c they’re talking over the thing i’m trying to overhear.
http://monthofapril2008.blogspot.com/2009/09/mute-pursuit.html
hi, justsomeone!
thanks for writing! make sure you post your poem link in the forum so people will make their way to it.
here we talk about the prompt or the process and i don’t want people to miss your poem.
[...] ReadWritePoem Challenge ReadWritePoem issues a new writing challenge for the month of September: [...]