Tag Archives: april poetry challenge

April 13th: Making Time, aka What are you looking at?

13 Thursday Apr 2017

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Poetry makes us slow down. And in that lengthening space, we are able to look closely–at a painting, a memory, a tree, a comma. Whatever it is, we look for a long time.

We look with all of our senses.

We linger.

I once performed a meditation in which you focus your attention on time and imagine a bubble, a dome, settling over your surroundings. The dome allows you to be present and protects you from the world on the other side of the bubble where time moves fast. You know that feeling of how something just won’t end? Usually it’s something we don’t want to be doing, right? A day that just won’t end. Well, this meditation switches this common experience so you can slow the feeling of time passing while you did things you really wanted to do. We all know that slow feeling. This allowed you to change it from dread to pleasure.

Funny. When I’m creating in the zone/in the flow, time ceases to exist. I don’t know if time’s expanded or contracted. There is no time. And when we enter that reality, we see differently.

This video reminded me of that experience. I hope it’s one you are all making time to savor.

Hidden Paintings 

Here are some more links on “fore-edge” technique:

Art on the Edge

Beauty on the Edge

Write on,

Michelle

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April Poetry Month: Some Small Delight

03 Monday Apr 2017

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It is April once again. The month we’ve nationally dedicated to poetry and poetry awareness raises my own awareness each year, too. In years past I’ve met the April Poetry Challenge and wrote a poem every day. Last year on TPB I shared daily prompts to inspire writing in all of you. This year I find myself thinking about awareness and attention.

At Western Michigan University the semester is about a month away from over and papers and deadlines are begin to heap. The weather is warming and so is the garden and house renovations calling. I have a tooth distracting me with appointments and pain, a fridge that needs constant stocking and cleaning, cats with their litter boxes, dust settling on the shelves. There are bills stacked on the table, laundry in the basket, a car belt screeching, and what seems like endless phone calls and emails to return. Outside my own little world I manage, the new Administration works to dismantle healthcare, environmental protections, privacy rights–rights of all sorts for all sorts.

What’s that you say? Write a poem? Read poetry?

So, this poetry month I’m going to work to focus my attention–no matter how briefly–on places and things where poetry grows, and away–no matter how briefly–from things that seek to destroy it. “Poetry” in a loose sense. Not necessarily written or verbal. I’ll open my eyes each day and see what the universe delivers. An image, idea, fact, discovery. Something of beauty. Some small delight.

What the universe offers to me, I will in turn offer to you, dear reader, dear writers.

May this April fill you with delight.

Write on,

Michelle

Day 30 Poetry Challenge

30 Saturday Apr 2016

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Holy cow–here we are. The last day of the April Poetry Month Challenge. If you have written a poem every day this month, congratulations! It is not an easy thing to do. Three times I fell behind on posting a prompt due to family and work.It has been restorative and an act of discipline to commit to the challenge. It is rewarding in many ways. Even if you didn’t write 30 poems, you have written something! And that is something to be jubilant about.

For your last prompt, write a poem that starts with an end and ends with a beginning. Think of images or subjects related to endings–the last page of a book, December 31st, graduation. And then something that we associate with beginnings: daffodils, the lights dimming in a theatre, an umpire yelling, “play ball!”

Thank you again for tuning into the Billow for this year’s prompts. If you’re on a roll, keep going! We’ll look forward to seeing your poems in our contests :)

Write on!

Michelle

Day 29 Poetry Challenge

30 Saturday Apr 2016

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For your 29th prompt, write a poem about dreams. Do you have reoccurring dreams or nightmares? I have dreams in which I can breathe underwater and dreams in which a huge, 80 ft tidal wave plows toward the shore where I am standing on the second story of a glass building. She me your visions. Take the time to detail the images and sensations of them.

Day 28 Poetry Challenge

28 Thursday Apr 2016

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We are really closing in on the end of this April’s challenge. Three more poems!

Our 27th prompt asked us to write a love poem. Now, write a hate poem. Feel free to rant.

Maybe you’ve had it with a colleague, a boss, Donald Trump, the squirrel on the bird feeder (ding ding ding for me!). And you know what else I have had it up to here with? Have you noticed how long it takes for professional people to call you back or fulfill requests? I call a lawyer every week for a month–it takes a month for him to call and he doesn’t leave a message. I request a document from a doctor and she doesn’t send it until I call five times. I send an email and recieve no answers to my questions until I email again and call twice. Also, I move the feeder, change the location of the baffle, and the damn squirrel still ends up on the feeder spilling seeds all over the ground.

You get the idea.

Rant on!

Day 27 Poetry Challenge

28 Thursday Apr 2016

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Yesterday was mine and Rob’s anniversary. In the context of this, for your 27th poem, write  a love poem. Here is one by Marvin Bell I have always loved:

To Dorothy

You are not beautiful, exactly.
You are beautiful, inexactly.
You let a weed grow by the mulberry
and a mulberry grow by the house.
So close, in the personal quiet
of a windy night, it brushes the wall
and sweeps away the day till we sleep.

A child said it, and it seemed true:
“Things that are lost are all equal.”
But it isn’t true. If I lost you,
the air wouldn’t move, nor the tree grow.
Someone would pull the weed, my flower.
The quiet wouldn’t be yours. If I lost you,
I’d have to ask the grass to let me sleep.

Day 26 Poetry Challenge

26 Tuesday Apr 2016

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I love using the randomness of a dictionary to help me start writing and exercising my imagination. So today, a couple of options.

Option 1: Close you eyes, turn to a page in the dictionary and point. Write a poem about the origin of that thing. For instance: The Origin of Orion. The Origin of the Onion. The Origin of the Ski. In a way, you are writing the thing’s mythology.

Option 2: Flip through the dictionary twice and use the words to fill in the following title: Explaining ______to a ______. For example, Explaining Orion to an Onion. Explaining an Onion to a Ski. Try to explain the first word in terms of the second. How would a ski related to an onion? …maybe that layer between the first and second layer of an onion’s skin that’s slippery as a winter mountain for starters! Keep going!

Thanks to Rob Carney for the 2nd!

Write on!

Day 25 Poetry Challenge

25 Monday Apr 2016

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For today’s prompt let’s try a mash-up. You should so far have 24 poems. Using the poems you’ve written this month, write a new poem using a line from each poem. It could be the first line from each, the last, the fifth, or a random one. Line them up and write a poem from there. Perhaps looking back you will notice a theme or reocurring image. Perhaps, integrate the lines that those appear in.

Day 24 Poetry Challenge

25 Monday Apr 2016

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For today’s prompt, write a poem of apology. As in, I am so sorry for not posting a prompt yesterday! The end-of-semester work is piled up, the days are sunny and 71 degrees. And as we’ve covered before, it ain’t called a challenge for nothing ;)

Who in your life do you owe an apology to? Do you owe yourself an apology for something? An apology to your hand for not using an oven mitt? To your grandmother’s now-stained antique table after noy using a coaster?  To the child you will never have? Or, does someone owe an apology to you? Write in the persona of someone saying what it is you need to hear that never have.

Day 22 Poetry Challenge

22 Friday Apr 2016

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Happy Earth Day! In honor of the earth, today write a nature poem. Take some time to sit and watch the local birds or wildlife. Remember a time you were in the woods and felt refreshed. Describe your camping tradition, a trying hike.

Yesterday I saw a hawk snatch a robin from my front yard. Two crows flew from the trees like knights to chase the hawk out of their territory. Our grass was left with a scattering of soft, small feathers. The crows and robins must travel together–they do this–different kinds of birds form a flock they travel with, around here from feeder to feeder, like a family to which we all belong.