Bespoke Poetry, take 2

It's been a great practice to do a daily writing challenge to prompt words. The subconscious is a funny thing. For me, writing is a process of inviting my back brain to make connections and take me places I never would have found otherwise. But I have to trick it to come and play. Having a group of words tossed at me has been a great way to get connected to my deeper self. 

Here are some of the recent pieces and the words that inspired them. When I've finished a month's worth of prompts, I'm thinking of putting them together in a free downloadable ebook file. Stay tuned!

 

Prompt words: summer, (bummer), runner, gunner, sinner, dinner

Prompt words: swerve, atoms, dogs, rain, pockets, bead

Prompt words: eclipse, sharp, marble, soar, whisper, bright

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Bespoke Poetry

You are probably as tired of reading about my difficulty in doing any regular writing for the past few years as I am in saying and living it. 

So I won't give any excuses, nor will I make any promises - except this one which I make to myself: I will spend 20 minutes every day engaged with writing. On some days, that will be the multiverse novel I'm fighting with. On other days, poetry. 

A few weeks ago, I sent out a tweet asking for folks to give me 6 words that I would weave into a poem. 

Want to help me dive back into #poetry ? Reply w/6 words & I'll see what I can do either using them as a prompt or including all 6 in a #bespoke #poem.

*reserves the right not to use words that don't feel right.
*nastiness will be reported/blocked

— LJ Cohen@🏠 (@lisajanicecohen) October 29, 2021

And folks came through. 

While I'm not participating in NaNoWriMo, I have been writing more steadily. Here are some of the first poems I've written, along with the words that created them:

For Laura Jane 

When I try to wish my way
into silence, fallen branch snap
and leaf litter whisper insist
on conversation. Witness
trees slowly spin stories
in a language I almost understand:
a thousand words for wind and rain,
sun and soil, birds and moss, the tickle
of small creatures against bark
and root. And my clumsy
footfalls; a steady heartbeat.

-Lisa Janice Cohen 11/3/2021

(leaf, star*, rain, spin, whisper, wish) 
*I had star in a line that I ended up cutting and didn't realize until I had already posted the poem

 

11/4/21

In the five centuries between
Father Falloppio's anatomy lessons
and the operation that removed
my ovaries and wayward tubes
I wonder how much wisdom we have accrued.
We still buy tickets to cancer's indifferent
lottery. Celebrate our losings
with extravagant meals--red wine, bitter
greens, ravioli, trying not to think
of rogue cells splitting open
like ripe fungi as we dine.

--Lisa Janice Cohen

 (fallopian, wisdom, green, ravioli, indifferent, fungus)

 

11/5/2021

I drive down roads without signs, streets
so familiar to the locals it would seem strange
to name them. Directions are always a story:
head up the lane a ways, look for the flying
pig on top of a red barn, turn left. Mind
you don't bottom out on the ruts. My survival
skills were made for a different landscape.
The farmer eyes my smile with mistrust,
would never describe his farm, his cows,
their breaths steaming in the chill morning air
as charming. His worry follows me. I fight
the urge to turn back and apologize for everything.

--Lisa Janice Cohen

(up, down, charmed, strange, bottom, top)

 

If you'd like to play along, tweet or comment with 6 words. (Same caveats apply as in the tweet above).

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Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction. Please click the box, then "subscribe" to allow us to send it to you via email.

November Writing Madness

If you're a writer, you probably know that November is NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The 30 days of insanity where writers of all ages, some for the first time, others multi-published authors, type their fingers to the bone to get 50,000 words on the page in one insane month.

I don't do NaNo.  Not for any reason other than it's not my process, and to twist myself in knots to write at that pace would defeat the entire spirit of NaNo which is to circumvent your internal editor and get to that 'crappy first draft', while having a bit of fun. 

I know myself well enough to know that NaNo would increase my anxiety to a point where I would feel like a failure.  Even if I did manage to write 50K in 30 days, I don't think I could make order out of that chaos.  My brain just doesn't do that.  (My most productive first draft was about 65K in 12 weeks, and although the result was a solid draft of "Future Tense," that pace was brutal on my body and resulted in some serious neck and arm problems that took another 6 months to resolve.)

However, I am no NaNo naysayer.  (Hey--look at that alliteration!) Many of my writing peeps do NaNo and I cheer them on from the sidelines.  I think it's super that they even have teens doing NaNo.  I love, love, love to see kids get passionate about writing.

If you want to see a lovely rebuttal to some of the snobbery around NaNo (and, boy, is there a lot of it), Dave Fenton (whose twitter feed is quite remarkable) links to this from the LA Times. 

So, even though I don't participate in NaNo, I do like challenges, so I'm playing with a different kind of writing madness in November.  Robert Lee Brewers November Poem a Day chapbook challenge.

It's been interesting in that I'm not writing any complete poems.  Rather in the spirit of NaNo, I'm letting my morning pages lead to 'crappy first drafts' of poems.  I've committed to just getting the words down and waiting until December to attempt to forge them into fully realized poems. 

There is something quite freeing in not worrying about craft at this stage.  Some interesting images and motifs are showing up, even without my intent.  So tricky, our subconscious minds.

I'll share some of the process of morning pages to first draft through revisions on the blog next month.

For now, happy writing, all.