Kissing the ceiling

We Write Poems:
Something elemental this week, something visual, stir in a generous dash of whimsey and that’s the poem prompt cue for this January week.  This is an image prompt, a photograph entitled “Kissing the ceiling”.  This image doesn’t make any ordinary sort of sense even while the components are quite common in usual life.  And that’s exactly the point this image has to offer us.  Allow your imagination to wander some, see what you find to turn into a poem to share with us.  Only one rule – have fun!

photo credit: Fred Muram, “Kissing the Ceiling – Tamar and Noah”, part of a series.  Please click on the image to see the full-sized version in a new window.

Come back next Wednesday when you see, “It’s Post Your Poems Day!” and leave a link to the poem on your blog. If you don’t have a blog, then please, post your poem in the comment itself. *** You are invited to respond to the prompt given here, but if you have something else you’re just itching to share, please feel welcome in doing that. Our first desire here is to encourage you to write and learn and share. *** When leaving comments to other’s poems, please be appreciative and encouraging. We are not a poem “critique” site (unless someone specifically asks for that). Be kind with each other (and yourself!). *** Please consider including a link with your blog poem back to the prompt response here at We Write Poems so that others may see and join our community. More participants do make better soup!

Keepsakes like a breath

We Write Poems:  
Write a poem out of nothing and everything. Keepsakes we keep of material things, reminding us of something else. So Gautami asked us to write a poem directly out of that memory, keeping out the material reminders.

Maybe this is another “tip of the iceberg”, that small visible face of something else far greater than what we more obviously see. Share with us now please how you found your path to address this poem prompt.

And thanks again to Gautami Tripathy for this fine prompt.

Don’t have a poem yet? Perhaps read a few done by others here, be inspired. There’s still plenty of time to discover a poem for yourself!

Leave the links to your poems in the comments of this post, then go visit your fellow writers’ sites and read their work. Remember to leave only positive comments in the spirit of sharing and not critiquing. We look forward to reading your poems!

Please remember to include a link with your blog poem post that links right back to here, this “Post Your Poems Day”, so that others reading your poem can also share in this community poem experience – maybe even someone new to We Write Poems!

If you are new to WWP, please be welcome to look around and read. The full prompt description you can find under “Recent Posts” on the top right of our page.

Keepsakes like a breath

  
We Write Poems:
Gautami Tripathy offers us this beautiful prompt for this week.  She writes, “I wrote a poem out of nothing and everything.  We hoard keepsakes of material things apart from our memories.  And I tried to create a poem from that memory, keeping out material things.”  Her resulting poem stolen moments well demonstrates her prompt suggestion more than can otherwise be easily described.  Please read her very evocative poem and take that as your seedling inspiration for what you write yourself this week.

Yes, we keep material tokens of moments we recall, yet they are only mere visible tips above the sea beneath wherein lay the actual feelings and memories held in more silent fondness and regard.  Find those elements inside yourself, let them come drink some light.  There’s our prompt.

Thank you Gautami for this writing prompt!

Come back next Wednesday when you see, “It’s Post Your Poems Day!” and leave a link to the poem on your blog. If you don’t have a blog, then please, post your poem in the comment itself. *** You are invited to respond to the prompt given here, but if you have something else you’re just itching to share, please feel welcome in doing that. Our first desire here is to encourage you to write and learn and share. *** When leaving comments to other’s poems, please be appreciative and encouraging. We are not a poem “critique” site (unless someone specifically asks for that). Be kind with each other (and yourself!). *** Please consider including a link with your blog poem back to the prompt response here at We Write Poems so that others may see and join our community. More participants do make better soup!

Respond to this…

We Write Poems:  
So you’re standing on that stage and the lights go down, or come up, or the spot lands on you. Then you have a clear inner sight in response to the director’s prompt, or you don’t and you’re just winging it, or the words just seem to come all of themselves from your mouth. You see, there’s really no “wrong way” to respond to this prompt, except that the invitation was to respond in some immediate and visceral manner. Maybe even surprise ourselves in the process!

The seed for this process and prompt was a single line from a diary. (Please refer back to the original posting for the full prompt.) We hope that perhaps you took this opportunity to respond in a more emotive rather than rational manner. Can we be both writer and audience to our own poems, a process of unexpected self discovery? Your time now to respond.

Don’t have a poem yet? Perhaps read a few done by others here, be inspired. There’s still plenty of time to discover a poem for yourself!

Leave the links to your poems in the comments of this post, then go visit your fellow writers’ sites and read their work. Remember to leave only positive comments in the spirit of sharing and not critiquing. We look forward to reading your poems!

Please remember to include a link with your blog poem post that links right back to here, this “Post Your Poems Day”, so that others reading your poem can also share in this community poem experience – maybe even someone new to We Write Poems!

If you are new to WWP, please be welcome to look around and read. The full prompt description you can find under “Recent Posts” on the top right of our page.

Respond to this…

  
We Write Poems:
      Here’s the meat.
You’re standing alone on a stage. Think poet/actor audition or workshop. The director and writer are sitting in the empty theatre before you. The director reads to you,

As the Great War drew to a close, a young Englishwoman wrote wearily in her diary, By the end of 1916, every boy I had ever danced with was dead.

Your instruction:  respond to that sentence!

Respond means simply that – your immediate and intimate personal response. It doesn’t need to be literal, not “about” war or boys or loss or death, but rather take the energy of that one perfect sentence – and respond in whatever mode or focus as you choose to do.

      Here’s the potatoes.
I was reading the paper while eating breakfast, and here’s this article, “Why scale Mount Everest? It’s complicated”, a review of a new book, Into the Silence. And as given above, that was the beginning of the leading paragraph. And what an incredible perfect sentence that diary expressed! What you might call a perfect prompt as well. So this prompt is not about climbing a mountain, or why this was one response to that great and tragic war, not about those sorts of details. Good writing can be poetry, can be prose; in the end the result is the same. Notice the emotional range and energy of this one single sentence. That’s what we invite you this week to consider and reflect from your own experience as a writer. Take this as your emotional seed.

Challenging? Perhaps. But just look to your own feelings and respond. No right or wrong way to respond, but look to the feelings, let that guide you here.

(Credit to Gaylord Doid, Witchita Eagle, for this article.)

Come back next Wednesday when you see, “It’s Post Your Poems Day!” and leave a link to the poem on your blog. If you don’t have a blog, then please, post your poem in the comment itself. *** You are invited to respond to the prompt given here, but if you have something else you’re just itching to share, please feel welcome in doing that. Our first desire here is to encourage you to write and learn and share. *** When leaving comments to other’s poems, please be appreciative and encouraging. We are not a poem “critique” site (unless someone specifically asks for that). Be kind with each other (and yourself!). *** Please consider including a link with your blog poem back to the prompt response here at We Write Poems so that others may see and join our community. More participants do make better soup!

C o n g r e g a t e

We Write Poems:  
Marian Veverka invited us to think and write about the experience of a person within a group or community activity. Were you a drum major or cheerleader perhaps? No? Alright, probably not many of us were. Then how about music or dance or sport or social service community activities? How was that experience for you? What might you have seen or learned that you wouldn’t have being alone instead? Remember too, even right here – this is a group activity of poetic desire! Time now to share.

Thank you Marian!

Don’t have a poem yet? Perhaps read a few done by others here, be inspired. There’s still plenty of time to discover a poem for yourself!

Leave the links to your poems in the comments of this post, then go visit your fellow writers’ sites and read their work. Remember to leave only positive comments in the spirit of sharing and not critiquing. We look forward to reading your poems!

Please remember to include a link with your blog poem post that links right back to here, this “Post Your Poems Day”, so that others reading your poem can also share in this community poem experience – maybe even someone new to We Write Poems!

If you are new to WWP, please be welcome to look around and read. The full prompt description you can find under “Recent Posts” on the top right of our page.

C o n g r e g a t e

a community poem prompt

  
We Write Poems:
Having completed our seasonal holiday transitions we now resume using our own community poem prompts.  In one respect transitions can be a distillation of the many into one, or as we’ll examine this week, what results can come from the gathering of individuals into a group.  This is what Marian Veverka asks us to consider now.  Tell us about what things a person can do as a member of a group or community.  Examples would include games, playing in a band or orchestra, singing in a chorus, playing sports, or even climbing mountains, sailing, doing acts of community service.  Select some specific group activity and write your poem with that as focus this week.  Perhaps describe how the group does what the individual cannot, the dynamics of a group, how the individual relates and acts within a group, or whatever other aspect of “group activities” as you wish to explore.

Thank you Marian for this idea.  Read her original posting here.

Welcome to our new year!

Come back next Wednesday when you see, “It’s Post Your Poems Day!” and leave a link to the poem on your blog. If you don’t have a blog, then please, post your poem in the comment itself. *** You are invited to respond to the prompt given here, but if you have something else you’re just itching to share, please feel welcome in doing that. Our first desire here is to encourage you to write and learn and share. *** When leaving comments to other’s poems, please be appreciative and encouraging. We are not a poem “critique” site (unless someone specifically asks for that). Be kind with each other (and yourself!). *** Please consider including a link with your blog poem back to the prompt response here at We Write Poems so that others may see and join our community. More participants do make better soup!

Begin at the Bottom

The Body, a series, part 1

We Write Poems:  
First in a series about The Body which we’ll continue from time to time over the months to come this year. Write a poem about your feet. That’s the prompt we suggested for this week. Did you find yourself out on a limb or was it a perfect fit? Feet are your literal and figurative connection with gravity and our planet here, however there are many ways to view and write about this body boundary and connection. Please now share with us your result.

Don’t have a poem yet? Perhaps read a few done by others here, be inspired. There’s still plenty of time to discover a poem for yourself!

Leave the links to your poems in the comments of this post, then go visit your fellow writers’ sites and read their work. Remember to leave only positive comments in the spirit of sharing and not critiquing. We look forward to reading your poems!

Please remember to include a link with your blog poem post that links right back to here, this “Post Your Poems Day”, so that others reading your poem can also share in this community poem experience – maybe even someone new to We Write Poems!

If you are new to WWP, please be welcome to look around and read. The full prompt description you can find under “Recent Posts” on the top right of our page.

Begin at the Bottom

The Body, a series, part 1

  
We Write Poems:
Ready to begin a new year? Let’s start with a physical foundation, and in fact the way we daily connect and ground our life with the planet we inhabit.  Write a poem about your feet.  Simple as that! Throw this idea into the pot and see what boils up for you. How you construct your observation and poem is all for your creative whim to define.  How do your feet feel about your life? Care to have a conversation with your feet? Do your feet have favorite shoes or socks? What’s the history of your feet? What goals do your feet have for the coming new year?  Sublime, divine, or mere folly – your choice here.

This prompt will be the first in a series, The Body, that we will come and revisit from time to time over the next months.  So if you’re itching for another body part – patience please; we’ll get to more.

Beginning with the new year we’ll also return to our community prompts!

Happy New Year to all.

Come back next Wednesday when you see, “It’s Post Your Poems Day!” and leave a link to the poem on your blog. If you don’t have a blog, then please, post your poem in the comment itself. *** You are invited to respond to the prompt given here, but if you have something else you’re just itching to share, please feel welcome in doing that. Our first desire here is to encourage you to write and learn and share. *** When leaving comments to other’s poems, please be appreciative and encouraging. We are not a poem “critique” site (unless someone specifically asks for that). Be kind with each other (and yourself!). *** Please consider including a link with your blog poem back to the prompt response here at We Write Poems so that others may see and join our community. More participants do make better soup!

A Natural History of My (room)

We Write Poems:  
Did you find some place, some comfy chair, to settle into this week and deliver us a taste of history from inside your home?  We asked you to write a poem entitled “A Natural History of My (room)“, selecting whatever specific room you desired and given in a very personal sense.  So what room did you decide to describe? A room where you feel the most at home, maybe a room where you most feel connection with family, or perhaps a room that challenges your perceptions of place? Is your poem more direct physical description of the environment or evocative of personal memories gathered in place? We look forward to reading your results.

Don’t have a poem yet? Perhaps read a few done by others here, be inspired. There’s still plenty of time to discover a poem for yourself!

Leave the links to your poems in the comments of this post, then go visit your fellow writers’ sites and read their work. Remember to leave only positive comments in the spirit of sharing and not critiquing. We look forward to reading your poems!

Please remember to include a link with your blog poem post that links right back to here, this “Post Your Poems Day”, so that others reading your poem can also share in this community poem experience – maybe even someone new to We Write Poems!

If you are new to WWP, please be welcome to look around and read. The full prompt description you can find under “Recent Posts” on the top right of our page.