Category Archives: Writer

ABC dialogue poetry

My second poem for April Poetry Month is quite different from my first.

At a workshop sponsored by the Canadian Authors Association on Saturday, Tim Wynne-Jones challenged us with the exercise:

For 6 minutes, write lines of dialogue. The first letter of each new line must be the next letter in the alphabet, A to Z.

Here is my result. Keep in mind . . . I only had 6 minutes so, yeah, it’s a little crazy. And I didn’t get all the way through the alphabet the first go-round. I got as far as O. All the letters after that I completed in a subsequent 6-minute time allotment.

Z Solution

An elephant can't fit through there.
Butt's too big.
Can we push?
Don't think that'll help.
Elephant weighs eight tons.
For F*&!'s sake.
Get me a lever.
How about an axe?
In case of emergency, break ass?
Joker, ha ha.
Keep thinking. 
Look behind the mandrill's cage.
Manny the Masturbator?
Notice how he drools when you walk by?
Oh no, he prefers blondes. 
Perhaps everyone does, even the elephant.
Quite annoying, that is. 
Ridiculous, like this situation. 
Suppose we go around? 
Through the zebra's field. 
Unbelievable how you used the Z word before the end.
Verily, I say onto you ... no worries.
Why? 
X was the real problem, because there's another word for Z.
Yes, this place is a real ...
Zoo.

A little poem to lead us to bigger things

Sunday was World Poetry Day, as proclaimed by UNESCO. In honour of that event, I have written a poem, which I will share with you now.

(Ahem)

I say . . .
I don't care what you say.
I see . . .
Yes, through my eyes.

But . . . that way, we're both blind.

.

A poem to send us into the day with the intention of kindness to all and celebration of everyone, no matter how different from us they might be.

Our technology gives our generation an opportunity that generations before did not have.

  • We can reach out instantly across the world to share our stories.
  • We can learn and strive to understand the stories of other cultures.
  • We can solve problems together and share resources.

What an opportunity we have! But we’re squandering it with our hate and derision. We’re using technology to create deeper divides instead of to close the gaps.

We’re being little. I’m guilty of it myself.

For today, I’ll try to do better.

Poetry Creation Station
April is National Poetry Month. I have set myself the challenge for that month of writing a poem a week. (I don’t promise that it will be GOOD poetry.)

Goof morning: A fluke flash of happiness

Twice in the past week I started very serious, important emails about very serious important matters to colleagues. Both times, instead of writing “Good morning,” my index finger travelled too far to the right on the keyboard, and I typed “Goof morning.”

Astonishing how much that made me smile.

The very serious, important matters felt not so very serious or important after all. The typo brought a flukey flash of happiness that changed the course of my day.

May it change the course of yours too.

Email with subject "Very Serious Important Matter" with Goof morning as intro

Mind like water: Stress-free productivity

Don’t get set into one form: adapt it and build your own, and let it grow. Be like water. Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless—like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; you put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

—Bruce Lee as found in Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

Over the past year, during my work at the library or as a writer, I’ve heard comments like this:

  • I’m trying to read now that I have more time, but I can’t concentrate!
  • My mind doesn’t want to focus on anything “heavy.” My productivity has plummeted.
  • I’m supposed to be working/writing, but it’s so difficult to stick with it.

The stresses of COVID are messing with our minds, and our productivity.

Today I wanted to lie on my couch and do nothing. That sounded like the BEST plan.

I opened my phone. I clicked on an old link. I found Bruce Lee’s phrase, and I got up off the couch.

“Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input, then it returns to calm. It doesn’t overreact or underreact.”

—David Allen in Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

If I throw a rock into a pond, the water has to react. It can’t NOT react.

COVID threw a rock into us. It was a BIG rock. We responded. We couldn’t NOT react. And we reacted appropriately to the force and mass.

Now, like water, we can return to calm. Out of that, productivity flows.

Ripples on water

Groundhog Day: Start from where you are

When we run a race, do we start at the finish line?

Of course not. We begin at the starting line, run every step (maybe walk a few), and cover all the ground in between.

Why do we want to start at the finish line in other areas of our lives? And why do we expect other people to be standing at the finish line before they have run the race?

Parents do this all the time. Children pass through difficult phase after difficult phase, with parents wishing each phase away:

  • “When will this baby ever (take a bottle . . . sleep through the night . . . wean from the breast . . .)?”
  • “When will my toddler ever (potty train . . . stop throwing temper tantrums . . . give up the soother . . .)?”
  • “When will my child ever (stop crying every day at school . . . learn to read . . . stop sucking her thumb . . .)?”
  • “When will my teenager ever (do his homework on time . . . clean up that pigsty of a room . . . stop doing drugs . . .)?”

We want our children to be perfect, fully formed people without letting them run the race.

We adults have unrealistic expectations of ourselves too. We want to be in some other better place instead of where we are.

Whether it’s losing ten pounds, playing “Moonlight Sonata” on the piano, finishing a jigsaw puzzle, or writing a book, we can’t start at the finish line. We have to run the race, go through the process.

I’m thinking about this on Groundhog Day.

This is a picture of a groundhog in summer – not in winter in Ottawa, Canada, where I live.

No respectable groundhog is showing his face around here any time soon.

I LOVE the movie (it might be my favourite of all time), but the day? What a ridiculous idea. We can’t skip over winter to get to spring. WE ARE GOING TO HAVE SIX MORE WEEKS OF WINTER NO MATTER WHAT! This is Canada, for goodness sake. Nature has to run the race.

We can’t start at finish line. That’s the theme of the movie. Settle in. Take steps over and over. You’ll get there.

All the groundhogs in this field are snoozing under the snow.

Rubber boat: Laughing into the next four years

I never thought I’d see the day. This week I saw a headline about the United States that read: “An Empire Has Fallen.” Conversations over the past few days have involved the phrase, “I hope the election can unfold without violence.”

Dear America, what has become of you? As often as I have resented you for being bigger, better at the Summer Olympics, and more replete with winter sunbathing beaches than my Canada, more often I have admired you. Oh, how I want to do so again.

I can’t bear to think about the election. It’s so out of my control. I’m distracting myself with happy thoughts. Like rubber boat, for instance.

Recently, on The Spectacled Bean blog, Ally asked the question: “Of all the words in the English vocabulary which ONE is your favorite?” (Something to ponder.)

It reminded me of an experience I had way back in 1980 when I was an exchange student in Mexico. I went to an all-girls, Catholic high school. (Quite a change for me. This Protestant girl did not know a Hail Mary from a Hall Monitor.) I was learning to speak and write Spanish, but the girls there loved to practice English.

One day, in a book we were working on together, we came across a picture of a rubber dinghy. The girls asked me how to say it in English.

“Rubber boat,” I replied.

They fell apart laughing. To a Spanish ear, that sounds hilarious.

“What?!” they said. “Say it again!”

“Rubber boat,” I repeated.

They howled with laughter, even louder than before “Again!”

“Rubber boat,” I said.

The more I said it, the harder they laughed. Then they tried saying it, and I couldn’t help laughing at them. Soon all of us were gasping for breath with tears running down our faces.

Ah, such a happy memory. I’m going to ride it into this week. America, I’m pullin’ for ya.

Two hands put together to form the shape of a heart.