Someone could get to thinking that I have fallen out of the writing habit, given that it’s been a while between posts.
Not the case. Every day I do some kind of writing: content for websites at work, documents for organizations I volunteer with, or simple journaling for myself. Those words end up in the world, but not in this place.
One of my favourite daily writing practices involves . Every day (or most days anyway) I craft a very short story through the hashtag #vss365. That is, a Twitter-length story based on a prompt word, 365 days a year. Here a few of my favourites.
#vss365#nub SEEKER: Wise one, I climbed this mountain to find the meaning of life.
HERMIT: Beware the Nub of Fear.
SEEKER: What?
HERMIT: It lies at the heart of all you desire. Overcome it to fulfill your dreams.
#vss365#pinball I admired her ability to pinball through a party. A hand on an arm here, a whispered confidence there, a refreshed drink, a peck on a cheek.
I leaned against the wall ready to flee if someone said the words I hated most: “You’re awfully quiet.”
“Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems . . . A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.”
With the guidance of JC Sulzenko, I crafted a found poem. (Find it at the end of this post.)
Here is the process:
Find a source text. It could be a table of contents, or a series of titles, or a restaurant menu.
Either erase words you don’t want to include in your poem, or highlight words that attract you.
Create a poem with the chosen words.
The words should appear in the same order as the source material. (Perhaps with some allowances for changes in grammar or punctuation.)
Credit your source(s)!
Here is the source that JC provided for us. It is a list of best-selling book titles.
I Will Find You
Spare
A Death at the Party
The Movement Miracle
It starts with Us
8 Rules of Love
Women Talking
Run Towards the Danger
Worthy Opponents
Paris
Old Babes in the Wood
The Myth of Normal
The Book of Rain
Love, Pamela
Hello Beautiful
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse
Birnam Wood,
12 Rules of Life
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Murder at Haven’s Rock
Song of the Sparrow
Kunstlers in Paradise
Greenwood
When the Body Says No
Pure Colour
Ducks
Someone Else’s Shoes
Young Forever
The Story of Us
Rez Rules
The Light We Carry
Eight Strings
Scattered Minds
And here is the poem I found there.
SPARE
At the party
women
worthy opponents, rain love.
The fox rules paradise,
us.
Try it. It’s fun. What poem can you find in the list of titles?
Here is the first joy from my week. Her name is Farley, and she is my daughter’s new puppy. Look at that face!
My second joy is this colourful arrangement of heart cookies I made for Valentine’s Day. Yum!
The third joy was a sunset cross-country ski outing – with horses!
And now the book, which is also a joy. The Poetry Circle of the Canadian Authors Association branch in the National Capital Region published an anthology. Five of my poems are included in the book. You could buy it if you wish. (It would bring you joy.)
I work part-time at a library. Almost every day this happens:
A child about 7 or 8 years old enters with a parent.
"Mommy (or Daddy), do they have books about____________ (dinosaurs... Lego... unicorns...)?"
"You'll have to ask," the parent says.
The child slinks behind the parent's leg, unwilling to face the scary prospect of talking to an adult. "You ask."
Last week a similar scenario unfolded beside me. A young boy asked his father about a book and his father told him to ask me.
I posted this on a previous blog. It’s come to my mind again in recent weeks.
Sometimes I wonder . . . Did someone ever say to Mozart, “Ya know what, Wolfgang? I think that should be two quarter notes instead of one half note.”
Have you ever been lost for words in an emotional moment only to think later, “I should have said this . . .”?
Or perhaps you said the absolutely worst thing possible only to think later, “If only I hadn’t said that!”?
Or maybe you have thought, “If I could do that over again, I’d do it differently.”?
We don’t get to edit our lives before publication.Everything we do is first draft.
Anne Lamott encourages writers to “Write shitty first drafts.” She knows that getting something—anything—down on the page is key. Writers can’t believe that words are supposed to sprinkle gracefully onto the page in perfect pearly rows. We’d never get anything done, we’d be so frozen with apprehension.
A mediocre mess of an idea out there is better than a perfect pearly idea hidden.
Every day we meet people and choose words to speak to them. Sometimes we choose appropriate, helpful words. But sometimes we choose hurtful ones.
Every day we choose clothes and do our hair. Sometimes our wardrobe and hair could be on the cover of Vogue. But sometimes we manage only sweatpants and a washed face.
Occasionally life kneecaps us with unexpected blows. Sometimes we rise above it with wise, rational choices. But sometimes we solve problems with beer and a whiskey chaser.
We can’t edit our lives before publication, and that means our words and actions won’t sprinkle gracefully in perfect pearly rows. We have to live our delightfully shitty first draft and forgive ourselves for it.
Because one mediocre mess of a life out there is better than a perfect pearly one hidden.
“When you seek me, you will find me, when you will seek me with all your heart.” –Jeremiah 29:13
I attended a concert on Friday night. Due to COVID restrictions, the venue needed to bar access to every other row of seating. They did so with humour.
The sign above made me laugh, and think.
We often seek some wonderful new event or item for our lives, and we expect it to appear immediately and directly in our path. POOF!
Not so fast. Maybe we can find what we seek, but not right away and not in the first place we look.
Seek, and then keep seeking, with the whole heart.
Ioan Harea on violin and Judy Ginsburg on piano. Lovely.
Somerton Smith 