venus poetry project

October 26, 2008

Hm … interesting question. Well, this all started when I was playing around with a graphic of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. I started playing with ideas for a website that would have loads of pages hidden behind links that were scattered all over the painting. After a while, the idea of having a whole bunch of poems that people would find by clicking around in the painting just popped in my head, and it immediately trumped all of my other ideas.

(Click on the excerpt to visit the site and play along.)

a gothic writing prompt

October 24, 2008

In honor of this season, and my favorite holiday, Halloween, this week we explore the world of Gothic poetry. (Oh, and to anyone reading us from down under, just play along). Gothicism as an artistic movement is largely part of the Romantic era. The Romantics turned away from the science and realism of the Enlightenment and focused on more subjective areas of experience. Gothic art was toward the fantastic end of what they explored, but spooky. On the non-spooky but still fantastic end was Surrealism.

(Click on the excerpt to read the entire piece.)

skeleton poem up for grabs!

October 21, 2008

*** prize involved. read entire post, k? ***

No, not a scary Halloween skeleton poem. I don’t like scary and I don’t do scary. I prefer to ignore Halloween and hope that one year people will come to their senses and stop celebrating it.

What I mean by skeleton poem is the kind we played with over at Read Write Poem recently. (In case you missed that writing prompt and want to know what the heck I’m talking about, here’s the link: Bare bones, stripping the work down.)

Here’s what I did. I rummaged around and found a very old poem of mine. It’s dreadful really. I stripped it down and am posting it here for people to “complete.” I have some rules, though:

  1. Try to make it good. It can be funny or whatever — I like funny — but make it good. Don’t treat it like a Mad Libs game. (Or do. That might yield the best poems.)
  2. Don’t feel like you have to follow the spacing lengths for each word you choose. I simply included the spaces the way I did so you would have an idea of the overall form of the original piece.
  3. I want everyone to do this. And if you are not a poet, that’s no excuse (see item #4).
  4. Don’t feel like you have to be a poet to do this. C’mon. Just do it. I mean you, Churlita. And you, Neil. And you, Palinode.
  5. Feel free to post your poem on your blog, but please link back to this post so people will know where you got the inspiration.
  6. Either leave the link to your poem, or the poem itself, in the comments of this post.

To sweeten the deal, I will mail a poetry prompt/memento to the person whose response floats my boar. I mean, my boat.

To clarify, my boar does not float at all. He is heavy and meaty and hairy and somewhat dirty and wild and friendly and omnivorous. He is all those things. But he is not a swimmer or a staying-above-water-er. He sinks every time. Every. Damn. Time. I even had him fitted with a little flotation device. But still. He sinks. And sinks again.

OK. Enough about my boar. Here’s the skeleton:

[title]

__________ on _______

[body]

___ _______ _______ ______
in ______ and ____, ______ ____________
of _______, the _____
of a _______.

__, ____ a _____ _____. _____,
the _____ _____, a _____
of ___________ _____.
_________ in ___ ___ _____.

____ ___ ___ _____
______ the _______ of a ____,
___ _______ ______ in the ___.

______ _______.
An _______ ______, ________.
___ __ ___ the ________
_______ ____ ____ ___ ____
____ the ________ of
___________ _____.
____.

The _________ and the ___.
__ _________.
____ the ____ of _________ and ___.

echolalia writing prompt

October 21, 2008

Poetry makes sense of the world by reminding us of our spiritual, meditative and focused natures. By reminding us what we share in common. By helping us open our hearts to possibility and change. The very act of writing and reading a poem can change the world in just the same way that a butterfly (or moth, for Dana) flapping its wings in South America can send a tropical storm northward the following year. Poetry is language at its most auspicious: true, beautiful and transformative.

(Click on the excerpt to read the entire piece.)

read write poem goes even more collaborative

October 10, 2008

And so for our prompt this week, we’ll do a word-by-word poem. That is, the first participant will leave a word in the comments section, the next participant will add the next word, and so on, until comments are closed at midnight Central Standard Time Sunday. Participants may take as many turns as they want, but place just one word per comment please. (And let someone — or someones — else take a turn after you go before you go again.)

fishing for poems

September 20, 2008

Read five poems by the same author, or five poems from five different poets. From each poem, choose a word you like, a word that jumps out at you. Write words cards (with one word noted on a card or paper slip), and place them in a box or an envelope. I use an old coffee can for this kind of writing exercise.

After you sit down to write your poem, draw one word, and let that word be a part of the first sentence or line you write. Continue writing your poem, drawing another word each time you come to a pause. Try to write eleven lines.

explore the elegy

September 10, 2008

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.

biohazard

September 9, 2008

If humanity — and the earth — survive the next hundred years, people will wonder: how could we have lived like this? How could we have borne the knowledge that we were bringing disaster upon ourselves and still continued to consume? What was it like to live through a slow-motion cataclysm? For this issue, we’re soliciting original writing, video, music, art and photography created in response to this self-destructive prophetic fire at the heart of our civilization — or any civilization (and there are many) with end-of-time myths.

poets like to watch

September 5, 2008

But this week, fellow Read Write Poem-ers, there are no mothers to protect us, no sheets to shield our view. Find a poem in the typical things that we can’t look away from, like train wrecks or car crashes or look deeper into our fascination with human oddities or other people’s domestic dramas. Peep at something you’re not supposed to see, like a couple having sex or a stranger crying.

one word prompts

September 2, 2008

simple. you’ll see one word at the top of the following page.
you have sixty seconds to write about it.
as soon as you click ‘go’ the page will load with the cursor in place.
don’t think. just write.

(You can also get one-word prompts from Read Write Poem. Just look for the “Random Prompts” section in the sidebar. You can even click refresh to see a new word. Use words alone or string them together. The randomizer is yours to do with as you please.)

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This is my blog wherein I, Dana Guthrie Martin, write things and stuff. Most of the time, writing and I hobble along in a sort of three-legged race where there is no finish line. (more...)

You have to risk embarrassment to write in a voice that is yours. — Kevin Clark