by the Read Write Poem Staff
Does the intensity of NaPoWriMo have you talking to yourself yet? Almost? Perfect! Rhiannon’s prompt gives you something else on which to focus these conversations: pictures.
Many people collect favourite images, whether as memories or posters, sketches or computer files. Pick one such collection of yours – a stamp collection, a postcard book, a file of photos – and rifle through it until something catches your eye. (If you don’t have such a collection, try putting a word – any word – into Google image search or flick through the website of an art gallery.)
Once you have an image, begin to interrogate it for poems. Ask: Who or what in this picture could speak? What would they say? Why is this image meaningful to me? When I look at it, what am I remembering? How does this image make me feel? Which of my moods is easiest to find in it? Where would I want to display picture? Who do I want to see it?
Collect the answers to your questions as a hoard of words or phrases. Scatter them across a blank sheet of paper, then check for patterns. What rhymes? Where is there alliteration? Is any rhythm apparent? Patterns might suggest a form for the poem.
If there aren’t enough patterns, you have two choices: either write your poem as free verse or go back to the images and generate more words. Have fun! 
Reminders for everyone
Read the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge Kickoff post for details on how the challenge works — and how you can engage with Read Write Poem this month, no matter what your personal writing challenge is for the month of April.
Please read this page to find out how Read Write Poem’s prompt posts work. Remember that work linked from any post this month is shared in precisely that spirit: sharing, as opposed to critiquing. If you haven’t done so already, please read all the pages under About in the navigation bar.
Ok now it is officially time for me to go to bed. Maybe this will come to me in my dreams.
Mark Lysgaard replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 1:50 am
Sweet dreamZzzz. Thanks for dropping by today!
~Mark
J. D. Mackenzie replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
I took Pamela’s advice and slept on this one
Lord Leighton’s Solitude
http://jdmackenzie.blogspot.com/
napowrimo#6
Kinda cheating, cause I’m been playing with this ekphrasis for a few days. Hope I don’t lose my Union Card!
http://www.dansbait.com/?p=159
On Brushstrokes in Flight: Port Columbus International Airport
I couldn’t help, but do this immediately! It came to me so easily. My poem is called It still smiles. I included the picture with it below the poem.
Stan Ski replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 2:07 am
It makes me smile too.
kagerrr replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Awww thank you!
viviblake replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 3:41 am
Not only the poem, but also the picture speak volumes. I love this way at arriving at a poem – the result is less contrived than a more formal method would have been.
kagerrr replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 12:47 pm
I just feel like everything happened to fall into place and fit wonderfully.
Landscape
Get mine here… no HERE!
poemsotherwise.blogspot.com/2010/04/bell-resonates.html
barbara_y replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 4:33 pm
nice, jeeves.
pamela sayers replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Jeeves,
Good one! I like the photo.
Pamela
“To match the sunset, heavy-footed / or silent, pocketed, like a coin”
Up now. Greg’s conversation with an image at http://www.gregoconnell.com
toxi1 replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
pretty.
gregoconnell replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
thanx =)
Here’s my day 6 poem, Dundee in the Dark Off prompt again, but hopefully I can manage an image poem or two for tomorrow
Some images I have from childhood were games like Chess, Checkers, Risk, Stratego, etc. Here is a poem of these childhood images in a contemporary context.
http://babblingoninbabylon.com/blog
Off prompt – Things I’m Not Scared Of .
and today’s offering
http://travelsinthefloatingelvis.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-6th.html
Just a very quick one. My house is standing on its ear, no food in the cupboard, Never mind…I am enjoying all the poems immensely.
‘Pheromones’
http://rallentanda.blogspot.com
I love the prompt today. It’s a method I often use, and there’s already a new poem brewing, which may take time to ferment. So here’s one I prepared earlier:
Quilting
Twirling and swirling they harmonise
as pinpoints of colour dance in the air:
motes in sunshine through the prism of eyes.
Light or heavy, bright or sombre
shades in symbiotic rhythm.
Multiple drifts in glorious array
compelled to obey the rules of colour.
Andy Sewina replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
I like the array/obey rhyme!
The writer interrogates his inner couch potato at Scrambled, Not Fried
Phew – finished seconds before I had to run out the door!
http://www.shicho.net/words/?p=1022
(Out for the rest of the day, so will have to catch up on everyone else’s writing tomorrow…looking forward to a treat!)
Here’s mine.
http://melrosemusings.blogspot.com/2010/04/marvellous-party-napowrimo-day-6.html
haikujunky replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
very nice!
There was only one image that I couldn’t get out of my mind, the image that has played a vital role in why I am an artist today. The only reason why I’ve pursued the life of a pauper and said no to the corporate dollar… his name is Charles Blackman
http://redshoepoet.blogspot.com/2010/04/napowrimo-challege-6.html
The New World
Long hours, low light
In the one-bedroom cold-water walk-up
In the lower east side
The family works around the kitchen table
Nimble fingers assemble artificial flowers
Hunched backs, strained eyes
To get the flowers just right
None speak English but the oldest boy
Ten years old, assembling flowers
It is not what he bargained for
It is not what his father expected
Of the new world.
Marija Sanderling
April 6, 2010
kolokolchiki replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
Wow. This poem packs a ton of commentary into a succinct description. Thank you.
…here’ my NaPoWriMo #6 – it’s my stream of consciousness…
http://mothersparrow.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/retreat/
I love the image I carry of this moment in time:
http://herwordsbloomed.blogspot.com/2010/04/napowrimo-6-converse-with-images.html
thank you
http://crankymango.blogspot.com/2010/04/red-and-green.html
Here is my response. Infinite Longing (working title)
http://poiesis3.blogspot.com/2010/04/napowrimo-6.html
Good prompt today I think. Thanks to Rhiannon for that.
I meant to find some sort of meaningful picture to work with, but I ended up with a daft one (at first, anyway).
Busy, Silly, Significant Times
A first draft of today’s poem. The picture is of a landscape quilt, showing the Loire and an old boat moored under a tree. But the memories it evoked for me were of my Thames-side childhood.
Anne’s quilt
The river says escape to me and freedom:
part of my rebellious childhood,
of dreamy days in the dinghy,
moored to an ancient pollarded willow
amid the sour, damp aroma of mud
and riffles of breeze in the leaves,
I am fearful of discovery
yet lethargic, contented
until, entranced in my book,
interior gurgles remind me of food,
forcing me to untie and row home
desultorily with the current.
Dad is waiting to scold.
I flee, jumping the flower bed
to avoid his hand
poised for retribution.
I want no-one to see this picture;
it’s too private, so I will guard
it in my head for dismal days.
kolokolchiki replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
“interior gurgles” made me smile
I’m in with a picture and a haiku
http://marcieaf.blogspot.com/2010/04/napowrimo-day-6.html
Most people know that Walt Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855. What few people know is that he plagiarized many of the most famous lines in the book from a lesser-known Massachusetts poet named Whit Waltman, who published his own Keep Off The Grass in 1854. The only known copy of Waltman’s book has been passed down by my family for generations, and I’m very happy to finally offer excerpts from it here.
http://jasoncrane.org/2010/04/06/poem-excerpts-from-keep-off-the-grass-by-whit-waltman/
Taking Note is my attempt at this one.
Writing Day 6 using Day 5’s prompt:
http://dance-of-words.blogspot.com/2010/04/anne.html
viviblake replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 9:06 am
I was just such a younger sister, sunshine! You made the whole poem such fun.
Essence
http://dharmamamasecrets.blogspot.com/
xxsm
Today’s poem
on my facebook
and here:
http://dash30dash.ning.com/profiles/blogs/day6-napowrimo-2010-write-a
Write on !!!!
Some very good creations are happening every day… keep sharing, keep writing.
This prompt really pushed me to a very different poem. I used some Creative Commons licensed photos from Flickr to write the following love poem:
Our Marriage
Thanks for the prompt, I tried and failed, so I came up with THIS (A NaiSaiKu and a NanoAmerico^)
My day 6 poem is on day 5’s prompt. Sorry, folks, but I have to sleep on my poems.
My Name Is Discovery
http://thelaughinghousewife.wordpress.com
Thank goodness for Flickr, is all I can say. Bridge Jumper
My poem is titled:
Whistle
I enjoyed this process and will definitely use it again. Went the free verse route this time, want to try something different next time.
Thanks for the prompt, Rhiannon!
I used one of my hubby’s photos.
I’m basically a bird-brain –
http://another2doors.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/the-gull-and-the-eagle/
Interesting questions Rhiannon. Took me a while to get into it.
your indelible photo
http://healingforthehealthy.blogspot.com/2010/04/napowrimo-6-converse-with-images.html
Managed to answer my own prompt! http://rhiannonproblematising.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/walls-have-ears/
viviblake replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 11:03 am
Wow! I loved that. Took a cliché and turned it inside out.
Here’s mine.
http://poemblaze.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/rwp-napowrimo-6/
Butterfly Shirt – a quatrain
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978155255
http://www.robertlunday.net/2010/04/poem-6-terrorist.html
no images can possibly convey the horror of miners trapped underground. Remember there is no suh thing as “clean coal” when the coal companies have blood on their hands. Here are the lyrics to a song by Gil Scott-Heron called Three Miles Down and the video to follow:
Here come the mine cars, it’s damn near dawn.
Another shift of men, some of them my friends, comin’ on.
Hard to imagine workin’ in the mines,
Coal dust in your lungs, on your skin and on your mind
I’ve listened to the speeches
but it occurs to me politicians just don’t understand
the thoughts of isolation, ain’t no sunshine underground
It’s like workin’ in a graveyard three miles down.
Damn near a legend as old as the mines,
things that happen in the pits just don’t change with the times.
Work till you’re exhausted in too little space.
A history of disastrous fears etched on your face
Somebody signs a paper, everybody thinks is fine
but Taft and Hartley ain’t done one day in the mines.
You start to stiffen! You heard a crackin’ sound!
It’s like workin’ in a graveyard three miles down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nhc55qjHHXs
pamela sayers replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Mark,
A great poem in light of the recent tragedy.
Pamela
I don’t know if it’s a conversation as much as a rumination:
Three Lay Stranded
An Apophysis fractal gave rise to a Comber
The Nazi Bride and the Rabbit
If I could own just one image of me
this is what I’d want you to see:
just a girl in cotton, palms cupped
upwards as if to catch pollen,
so tender were my fingers
a translucent bowl for sun to toy with,
make my blood transparent
as I held the baby rabbit, saw sunlight
pulse in its ear as it sat on my hand.
here is mine today:
http://teapartiesonneptune.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/children-of-the-dust/
Well, for some reason I don’t know, I looked through Google Images and chose a Picasso painting, then chose to use a poetic form I’ve never tried – a Triolet. I now understand Picasso and Triolets better. napowrimo is a challenge, right?
http://synecdochicstuff.blogspot.com/2010/04/napowrimo-6.html
Love this photo, read about Ratna Cafe of Chennai. Here is the link http://umaathreya.blogsome.com/2010/04/06/ratna-cafe/
mine is called spell I’m not certain that I used the prompt as intended, but I kind of like the result
Love how this turned out! Outta Idaho:
http://metaphysicworld.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/outta-idaho/
Mirror Epistle
~after Tarkovsky
in the corner of the room water pours through the ceiling
there is an old stove and great arched windows
the paint is peeling it is cold and wet
heavy molding around the ceiling
no one would live in such a place
this room is despair worse then poverty
a nightmare of peeling paint
a cascade of water in the wrong place
too wet and cold
a mirror is against one wall
keep this image hidden
My favourite so far (prompt AND poem!)
The Dance Class
Seven girls and women sitting on one burro in Tijuana Mexico
Some of us are wearing giant Mexican hats
We are laughing with the Japanese tourists
Who are standing behind the photographer
And snapping pictures of him taking a picture
Of us. We are all related. My three daughters
A granddaughter, my sister-in-law, Lil, who
Is sitting in front of the Burro and Lil’s daughter
Beverly, proudly, right in the middle, laughing
Beneath her giant hat which spells out MEXICO.
The burro is lying down. If he is tired of having
Strangers sitting on him, he doesn’t show it. His
Ears are pricked up, his eyes sparkling, he, too
Is almost laughing as the tourist get off their
Tour bus and take pictures of our picture.
The picture is in sepia. Its edges are curling with
Age. You can’t see the photographer or the tourists
With their small cameras. We are all wearing blue
Jeans. The burro is painted with dark stripes.. The
Sun is shining We have paid to have this picture
Taken.
The photographer is angry because all
The people sneaking up behind him and snapping
Pictures are getting away with not paying. He
Shouts at them in Spanish. But they are still
Laughing as they get back on their bus. Bev
Tells us that he is saying bad words. Roxanne,
The grand-daughter shouldn’t hear them. That
Makes us laugh even more.
When I look at this picture now, I realize all the
Action takes place outside the range of the camera.
But how were we to know that was the last time we
Would all laugh together? That the future would
Be so sad? We were happy, the photographer was
Angry, but the burro was calm. Lucky burro, I
Think. Perhaps it was him that captured the
Attention of the Japanese. Of us seven Gringas,
Four of us are still alive. The burro, of course
Would have died a long time ago.
So many collections, so many treasure images, so little time. I chose my great-grandmother’s treasure box. “Treasure Box” can be found at http://bridgeanna.blogspot.com
Blessings on your day!
http://seashelllz.livejournal.com/113444.html
This one was kind of tough for me. My brain is crowded today! But, I decided to include a recording of me reading it, so if you’re tired of reading, come on over for a listen
http://poetry.disorderedcosmos.com/2010/04/between-now-and-then/
I went with old postcards, and the first one I came across was a black and white image, circa 1960, of tourists respectfully bowing their heads at La Tombe du Soldat Inconnu. Here then, is Paris au Printemps:
http://caraholman.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/2010-napowrimo-6/
The image, an icon:
http://nothinghypothetical.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/a-psalm-of-david/
I’m no good with translating images into writing cues, but here’s my attempt at this prompt here.
I have a picture of a horse statue. Two horses are looking down on a park area and a dove has landed on one of its heads.
Two Horses
There are horses in the graveyard
Two horses with a smile
They have sat there forever
They are waiting their wile
They look down on a graveside
Or look up at the sky
They keep watch out for something
They can’t say what or why
A dove came a-flying
while the horses kept watch
And she sat on an eartip
with one foot in the notch
The dove asked the horses
Why do you stand guard
The people that lie here
are beyond care and ward
The horses stood silent
And never did flinch
They were doing their duty
And moved not an inch
I’ve been trying with the picture thing. Here is my post for today, about trees:
http://wp.me/pqWV4-8
I wrote this with Nathan Moore.
http://mygorgeoussomewhere.org/2010/04/06/i-grabbed-the-marmalade-then-came-to-see-you-the-sky-was-the-texture-of-crumpled-latex-gloves/
here’s what I did with Dana: http://disorder1313.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/i-grabbed-the-marmalade-then-came-to-see-you-the-sky-was-the-texture-of-crumpled-latex-gloves/
My poem, The Scream, can be seen at musetomyeyes.blogspot.com. It comes with a laugh warning, esp. if you go see the image I wrote from, which I could not attach.
If you’ve been to the Menil Collection in Housto lately, you’re sure to recognize this image!
http://triatriatria.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/boy-on-the-rooftop/
er, in *HoustoN*
The picture I chose is of a cartoon character named Despereaux. Here’s my take on the prompt.
http://systematicweasel.blogspot.com/2010/04/despereaux-4-6-2010-poem-day-challenge.html
Oh…this one wasn’t easy. (I much prefer my post from yesterday, in case you’re interested.) I did converse with images…one of a dead veteran and one of a black sand beach…My posts can be seen at http://rrosenchang.blogspot.com. Thanks!
Today’s:
http://yearofthebooks.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/poem-a-day-day-6/
Lots of interesting images came up. It’s posted with all the rest on
http://www.cathymcguire.com
It’s still not working; I’m really bummed that I can’t seem to leave a comment. this is the 3rd day of non-functioning commenting. One more try: my poem is uploaded at my website
http://www.cathymcguire.com/poetry.htm
Interesting prompt. I ended up with a page full of phrases and a wish that my dog was still there to distract me.
http://sheiladeethdrabbles.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-napowrimo-6.html
Dan Rako replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 7:08 pm
Dogs make everything better!
http://www.dansbait.com/?p=159
http://sadiespoems.blogspot.com/2010/04/image-of-him.html#comments
Tammy Gillmore replied:
April 6th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
April 6 ~ “Scooby Doo, Where Is the Rest of You?” ~ http://treasures.edublogs.org/2010/04/06/readwritepoem-april-6/
Just want to brag on my student Sadie who is posting on here also…she’s participating in this challenge and sometimes posting more than once a day! Go, Sadie! You make me proud!