Hello friends,
This week has been a slow, hard week. A good friend of mine lost their mother, and Emily’s sweet dog is having health concerns. It is strange how the sun shines and the birds sing even when our hearts feel heavy and anxious. But we thank God that just outside our windows is the reminder of His goodness, and we invite you to cling to it with us this week.
For this week’s craft and play, we are exploring the world we live in as poets. To do this, we are drawing inspiration from Finger Exercises for Poets, in which Dorianne Laux discusses what she calls the “personal universe.” Laux argues that each poet has such a distinct world of vocabulary, along with their personal style, that makes their poetry as unmistakable as a fingerprint. One of the exercises was to create a repository of words that represent your personal universe. We drew inspiration from that and created a prompt that you can do with a friend!
Prompt:
Brainstorm a wordlist from images, feelings, sights, sounds that exist in your “universe.” 8-10 words will do
Exchange the list with another poet
Write a poem for that poet using the words on the list
If you don’t want to do this with a partner, take words from another poet’s work/other sources to create a word bank. Or you could have a friend create a word list for you.
This prompt is interesting because you get to see words from your own world written in the style of a poet whose world is different than yours. The end result is a very worthy trade, and is a great exercise to do with a friend. You can make the poems as personal as you want. The beauty is that the final product is a sort of gift to your fellow writer.
The prompt is also a good exercise in writing for others. We imagine this strengthening the muscles it takes to be a poet at a marketplaces, writing poems for strangers with only a few things you know about them. What a gift it is to be able to write for someone!
Emily and I wrote poems addressed to each other, as a celebration of our friendship. It was fun to see what we put in our word banks, and even more fun to weave them into a poem we thought the other might enjoy. We hope you enjoy reading them:
Julia If I could have things my way we would be on your front porch right now exactly twenty six hours away from Sorrento, if I drive southeast down to Omaha Nebraska. I googled it, trust me. We would sit under the endless skies basking in sunlight watching your children play while leaves fall off your birch tree, quilting your sidewalk in yellow. A red car ambles by, you pour me a cup earl gray from your teapot and I pray: May your life be brimming with happiness, your son a mighty oak and your daughter a polished cornerstone. I lose my words and get distracted by the wasp hovering near the scones you laugh as I let out a very Canadian and polite scream. I've been bit by a wasp once you know beside the lettuce in the supermarket It felt like a lit match against my skin. A blue jay hops on your fence and sings. You joke that my Canadian scream must have attracted it. Your son bangs on your piano a familiar song we giggle some more and go inside for another cup of tea.
Emily Oh, hello friend, I didn’t see you there, Hiding your typos behind a gif Of blue sequined vampires, And because of that, I’m writing This poem while my mind Is blanketed in the Twilight soundtrack, I am writing this while dreaming Of the northwestern pines. Once I saw a garter snake. I caught It, and it slithered out of my hands, Cool and hot, afraid and terrifying, And when I replay that memory I think friendship might be the strangest Thing, how you slip into it like a snake In the grass, Yet here we are. I’d like to sit with you, Your brown couch aglow with orange flowers. I’d say it was a vibe, much Different from my ancient home In the middle of a cornfield. You’d laugh and pass me a bowl of rice, And if we are being honest, every grain Would be steeped in your strange poetry, And we’d bless the food and eat And there would be an abundance Of words, and suddenly we’d be famous, If only just in our minds, So long as we kept laughing behind Our tiny blue screens.
If you want to do this exercise with a friend but don’t have anyone to do it with, leave a comment or share it on notes to crowdsource a writing buddy! And when you’re done, be sure to tag us in your finished poems.
May you feel the love of God in everything you do this week.
I love this idea and will be sharing it with my writing group!