Pinterest poems on a snowy day!

So I made some pins of my poems from a record of night. Check these dudes out! I tried to make them like a piece of paper.

Week of Poetry on a Snow Day... [Day 3]

Hello, writing friends! How are your poems going? Here in CoMo, it's a snow day for most of us! I just finished breakfast with my wife and a dear friend. Now I'm lounging in the living room, in front of our wonderful fake fire, with all the windows open so I can watch the snow. Breakfast was bacon-pancakes, which you should definitely try. DELICIOUS. I also just read that one of my books of poetry sold in the past month. So, basically, it's a perfect day.

So I'm going to make a Grand-Poomba declaration: today is for writing! If you're looking for an excuse to curl up with your laptop or notebook and write, now is the time, now is the place. Get some coffee (or tea) and warm yourself with words.

I might even finish Hild today. A book by the fire, anybody?






Your prompt for today is as follows...
adoxography (n.) beautiful writing on a subject of little or no importance


Use this word or embody it somehow in a poem.



Have at it, friends!

Poetry a Week: Day 2

I made a banner! Whaaaaat.

The prompt for today is to go to a window or take a walk (but it's cold, so feel free to stay in the cozy warmth of a heated building). Write a poem based on the images you see. No form is required but please feel free to use one if you would like.




No narrative today! Knuckle down and get a'writin'. 

Imbolc: the poet's sabbat

I haven't talked about religion on this blog, and I'm not going into the woo-woo things behind the holiday, but this is one that really resonates in our house. Imbolc celebrates Brigid, the Celtic Goddess of poetry, bards, midwifery, fire, and the hearth. As I write poetry and Mel is a musician, we tend to really really dig this day. Who doesn't like poetry, music, and fire?? That is rhetorical as the answer is obviously everybody. It's no coincidence that I planned a week of poetry that starts today.

I love this sabbat more than Yule- which is saying a lot, because I love the crap out of that one. I love excuses to meditate on things that are important in our lives, any excuse for decorating, eating, and drinking. So I just wanted to share our alter and all the poems I scrawled on our front door.

Also, today is the 13th birthday of our deer kitty, Dinka. Happy birthday, old man! We love you.

Dinka on the left, Nishi on the right.

Burn some shit down and Yawlp! at the world! Purrrrrrr.

February Poetry Week: it begins...

look, I made a banner thing!

Oh hey, there! Welcome to a week of poetry. This week of poetry prompts was originally created by the Wilde Workshop to prepare us for National Poetry Writing Month. There will be one more in March, before NaPoWriMo starts. We will be work-shopping these prompts privately, but I wanted to share this practice with y'all, in case you find it useful.

The goal of this practice is to challenge yourself to write a poem-a-day. Each day of this week, I'll post a prompt that you can use to get your creative mojo juicing. You don't have to consider yourself a poet to participate! I'd like to invite you to join us by posting your poems, inspiration, prompts that work for you, and encouragement in the comment section. Maybe we can motivate each other to make it happen!

Not every poem you write this week will be good, or even mediocre. Writing is hard and we can't hit the perfect note every time we put pen to paper, or finger pads to keyboard, but we have to work our creative muscles so when we do hit the note, we can sing the whole song. It's a silly metaphor, but it's true.

Your first poetry prompt is to use the following words in a poem: cinnamon, Osage orange, molecular.

They don't have to be in any particular order and if it works better plural or as an adjective, do it. As long as the root stays intact. No particular length or form.




Have fun! Can't wait to see what y'all have up your sleeve :)

A quick note on paper poems and writing

I've tried to like e-book poetry, but I don't think it's my jam, which is rather a shame since that's how I self-published. I'm contemplating different ways to do a second edition. If I reserved all rights to Amazon, I could just have the book go through them. This would be very convenient but a very snobby, elitest part of me feels that would simply be feeding the beast.

But to make this artisan, I would have to get down and dirty with some book binding, which is not something I ever learned to do. I'm not sure how that would end.

I'm contemplating many things right now. Back in the day of Chaucer and other folks, they would have a single book that would be passed from noble to noble. Books were precious and printing them was a pain in the arse. This is a distinct possibility.

I'm also considering an idea, of about 5 seconds age. What about a book that grows old? I kind of like the idea of this... I've known I would never, ever, make a living off of poetry. No poet does. It's a fraking shame. What if I made a book that grew in perpetuity? I wonder what that would look like. Worth contemplation.

I'm also thinking about pinterest-ifying my poems. That's a thing? What about pinterest books of poems. What would that look like? Too kitschy?

In other news, workshop related...Want to write a poem a day? Join us. Resistance is futile. Us wylde, Wilde, wild writers are gearing up to start a week of poetry prompts. We've been doing it monthly. We're prepping ourselves for NaPoWriMo. Come to think of it- it would be kind of fun to do some stuff here? I'll post the prompts and y'all can use 'em if you want. We'll get something going, yeah? Moar poetry! Poems poem poems poems. Write.

It's nice to see y'all in 2014. Hibernating is bad, this time of the year. All of the trees are barren. The ground is made of cold, green spikes. The air is difficult to breathe. I tend to hibernate and eat as much as possible. Winter is a hard business and hopefully next weeks poem-a-day will help me grasp that flame. I'm really cold, right now. That's not a metaphor. My office is freezing and I wish that I could be warm for five whole minutes.

December, December, and some personal reflection...

There is always an excuse for quitting NaNoWriMo before I'm finished. Last year, it was because I wanted to burn my book in a fire* and because I was going to be on the road for about a week. This year, we had a death in our friend group and we were watching another friend's children while she was out of town. I had planned to write through the kids' visit (and even set-up a writer's nest in the mudroom), but the combined effort of copping with everything going on=a hot mess.

There is a poem that always seems to pop up in my life when I'm struggling with particularly difficult deaths. Outside of Dickinson's Because I could not stop for death, I think this is probably one of her most famous poems. I found the first one to be too abstract- but maybe it was my high school lit teacher singing the lyrics to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas that ruined that poem for me. I've had a collection of Dickinson's poetry since middle school, and this was the poem, of all her collected poems, that resonated deeply with me. For mother's day, I printed this poem and framed it as a gift to my mother.

Several years ago, when Pam died, two of our family friends also passed away of the same disease around the same time. This happened around the time I started this blog. It was a rough. I lost three women who were dear to my heart and role models for what strong, intelligent women can do in a world, as long as they stay true to themselves and their passions.  On the back of the program for Helen, this poem was printed. I took it, framed it, and put it in my home. It felt right.

I don't know what it is about this poem that follows me. The Sunday that we found out about Jade's death, it popped up in my pinterest. It was just there. It's just here. So I want to share it with you.

Hope is the thing with feathers
By Emily Dickinson 

Hope is the thing with feathers-
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops-at all- 

And sweetest-in the Gale-is heard-
And sore must be the storm-
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm- 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land-
And on the strangest Sea-
Yet-never-in Extremity,
It asked a crumb-of me.

I gave myself permission to let this goal go and focus on the people in my life who need some love (myself included). It has been a rough November. The difference between last year and this year is that I'm going to finish this book. I don't think it's any good, but I like my weird little queer hunter with her weird little family of thieves, knitters, and sailors. I keep having flashes of how I want to go on with it- so I'm going to make that happen.

I don't know how to lead a slow life, readers. I full-tilt run through my days and that's mostly how I like it. This is the first full day kid-free and I think I'm finally letting myself feel all the feelings about everything that's happened in the past two weeks. I've been weepy all morning. I wish I could take a couple days off to just be in the moment and sit with these emotions. I may hermit this weekend to bake, and write, and feel all the feels.

I'm excited about April already, and not just because it's the month between my two wedding anniversaries, but because Abbey and I are going to NaPoWriMo (yeah, buddy). One of the side effects of intense prose writing is that I have a pretty extensive list of ideas for poems that I didn't have the time to pen. By then, I want to get the mud room totally cleaned out and converted into a writing room. I'm getting a sweet space heater/fake fire/iPod player for Yule from my lovely wife, and a dear friend is donating her beautiful antique desk. I have plans for this mud room. It will be nice to have a room of my own.


*This would have been unfortunate, as I only write on my laptop. Can you burn a cloud? Questions for a future generation.