by Juliet Wilson
Now is the time to share all your secret lives. I really am looking forward to seeing what you’ve imagined for yourselves!
So, leave your links to your poems in the comments below. (They don’t have to be from the alternative life prompt, or from the Monday prompt. They can be anything you’ve written and posted on your blog.) Plus, do try to check out other people’s poems if you can, that way we can really share our work and build a sense of community.
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 Juliet Wilson
Whether or not we’re happy with our current lives, I’m sure most of us have at some point wondered what it would be like to live a completely different life. Perhaps you feel you were someone else entirely in a previous life, or maybe you wonder what would have happened if you had made another decision at a key point? This week, why not use one of these musings as a basis for a poem?
Me? Well, the rather severe look in my latest passport photo, combined with the ease with which I learnt Italian, made me wonder about “My Life as a Mafia Widow.” You can read that poem, along with everyone else’s, when we Get Our Poems On next week.
by Juliet Wilson
So now its time to share your poems using dialect, languages other than English and words or usages that may be peculiar to your family. I’m really looking forward to learning some new words and taking a peek into other people’s dialects!
It would also be interesting to know how you felt about writing these poems. Is dialect part of your identity or did this feel like an artificial exercise? Does it feel strange to share your “family words” or do they slip naturally into your writing? If you wrote a poem in a language other than English, how did that feel (whether its your mother language or a second language)? How about translation — is there an inherent untranslatability about poetry in a different language or dialect? Now I’ll stop asking so many questions and it’s over to you to share your poems…
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 Juliet Wilson
I read a number of interesting books about language over the holiday period and started thinking about dialects. Read Write Poem is a community bound together not only by a shared love of poetry but by a shared language.
But how much of our language really is shared? There are some participants for whom English isn’t their first language and those of us who do speak English as our first language are in such different areas of the world that we must have different vocabularies.
Some of us would perhaps claim to speak an identifiable dialect, but even those of us who don’t speak a dialect almost certainly know and use words that are local to the area we live in (or even unique to our family!). These words, if used sparingly can add a wonderful color to English language poetry. (There’s a place too for dialect poetry but that usually requires a standard English translation or at the least a glossary to be fully appreciated by many people.)
So the challenge this week is to do one of the following:
- Use one or a few words from your area in your poem (remember to define the words that other readers may not understand).
- If you speak a dialect, you could share a dialect poem (complete with translation or glossary!).
- If you speak a foreign language you could share a poem in that language complete with an English language translation.
Poem on!
by Juliet Wilson
52 Ways of Looking at a Poem is based on the articles Ruth Padel wrote for the Independent on Sunday newspaper.
The idea behind the articles and the book is to encourage the reader to read poetry more closely, to pay more attention to both form and meaning. Fifty-two poems are chosen — one for each week of the year — and dissected, with Padel’s trademark informed intelligence. Poets represented include Seamus Heaney, Don Paterson, Colette Bryce and Vicki Feaver.
The poems cover a range of styles, forms and themes, though all are relatively short, given the original constraints of the newspaper column. The analysis of each poem runs to at least two pages, starting with a brief biographical note on the writer, a discussion of the context of the poem and then an in-depth study of the way rhyme and rhythm are used in the poem and how these work to support and enhance the subject matter.
It’s a fascinating read, I certainly felt I was finding more in the poems than I otherwise would have done (and I’m a fairly close reader to start with). However, can it become counterproductive to over analyze a poem? Does such close reading drain the poem of its immediacy? These are interesting questions to ponder reading through this book.
It is also interesting to reflect on ones own writing from the standpoint of this book. How would my writing stand up to such close reading? How about yours?
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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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