What animal do you feel like today?
Please write with me and follow along some prompts to Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese, here:
What animal do you feel like today?
Please write with me and follow along some prompts to Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese, here:
Please write with me, and create a safe space for your wellbeing here:
Please watch the Guidelines to Let’s Do Words here:
Please watch the Introduction to Let’s Do Words here:
Please watch this video before attempting any exercises!
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or it certainly seems that way!
Just a quick announcement that coming soon, Let’s Do Words is setting up a new home on YouTube.
Watch this space, or the YouTube’s space, or the Let’s Do Words Facebook’s space. Any space, really. Space.
Hope you’re all well, and keeping safe and sane!
Bethan(doeswords) x
Small Update on #LetsDoWords Podcast. I haven’t forgotten about all you lovely writers! I’ve had a family bereavement and a lot of stuff that’s come alongside it, there have been podcasts recorded and they will likely be released more sporadically, like one every few weeks.
And now for our (optional) prompt! Today, I’d like to challenge you to write an abecedarian poem – a poem in which the word choice follows the words/order of the alphabet. You could write a very strict abecedarian poem, in which there are twenty-six words in alphabetical order, or you could write one in which each line begins with a word that follows the order of the alphabet. This is a prompt that lends itself well to a certain playfulness. Need some examples? Try this poemby Jessica Greenbaum, this one by Howard Nemerov or this one by John Bosworth.
Above the ground sprouted the daffodils that the
Brownies put there. Magic flowers they were
Called by all the Owls, but I can’t recall by anyone else.
Daffodils in their bright sunshine would grace the scene
Every year with no mind as to how they were put there.
Further up the
Grass banks were the little
Huts we used to use for some classes.
I remember singing ‘Colours of Day’ in the Portacabins.
Just around the corner, down some steps was the actual building
Knowing the layout now after not being there for years
Like it was yesterday, not ten years ago.
More like twenty. God.
Nobody noticed when three of us snuck into the
Other bathroom for the boys. Our eyes
Pealed wide with giggles. We had to be
Quick because it was part of a game where we had to
Run in and out. But then, all of a
Sudden, one of the girls had a better idea.
Touch that. She directed at me. Pointing down at a
Urinal cake. And I tried to distract her by trying to
‘Vest her interest into
Why it was called a cake if you dont eat it. This building for me, was meant to be
Xylophones and glockenspiels. Loving memories of a
Yesteryear. Tell that to young girl who then learned the true
Zeitgeist of the place. She placed her hand down and touched the urinal cake.
Napowrimo.net
Our optional prompt for the day takes its cue from how poetry can help us to make concrete the wild abstraction of a feeling like grief. “The Lost Pilot” does this, as does this poem by Victoria Chang, called “Obit.” In both poems, loss is made tangible. They take elusive, overwhelming feelings, and place them into the physical world, in part through their focus on things we can see and hear and touch. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write an elegy of your own, one in which the abstraction of sadness is communicated not through abstract words, but physical detail. This may not be a “fun” prompt, but loss is one of the most universal and human experiences, and some of the world’s most moving art is an effort to understand and deal with it.
Evening
He sits there with a blanket on his lap,
Draws it up over his lip and closes his eyes.
Lavender.
He sits there and sips from a engraved whiskey cup
Draws it up to his lip and closes his eyes.
Lavender.
He sits there and crosses his feet,
Uncrosses his feet, places them in slippers.
Lavender.
These ones weren’t his, he picked them up and put them back in the cupboard.
Goes to the kitchen. Grabs a whiskey glass.
Goes to the sofa. Grabs the blanket.
Closes his eyes
And starts to dream in lavender.
Napowrimo.net