Let’s Write Stuff
You can call it poetry if you wanna…
More of a Comment Than a Question
The hardest part of poetry writing is starting. Starting requires permission — usually from yourself. Starting requires the time to continue. You need a quiet space, some kind of pen thing, ample oxygen for breath. This space is about endless starting.
1. I have no idea what I’m doing and you can too!
For me, poetry is about playing with language as communion. I shall call it “communiplaytion.” Play is a serious thing when you take into account how horrible everything is and that death is our reward for surviving it. Some think poetry is something else entirely, and that’s fine for them. Truly I don’t care what we call this, let’s just find new ways to feel alive while we’re able.
2. How this works
Every other Thursday we host an online poetry workshop also called More of a Comment Than a Question (register here). At that workshop we begin with a warm-up exercise that’s usually an exquisite corpse poem we write together. Then we look at a model poem written by someone else. We read it, discuss it, and then isolate something from it to utilize as a writing prompt.
Then we share what we wrote and do it all again. It’s a two hour workshop and there’s always something magical that happens in that space.
After the workshop I’ll share the prompts here.
I really like the structure of reading something and responding to it in our writing. I also appreciate the warm and welcoming community and everyone's willingness to be vulnerable and appreciate that vulnerability in what people share.
-From a MoaCTaQ Participant
3. You can’t tell me what to do!
It’s true! The writing prompts are suggestions. They usually start with a list for brainstorming but one of our participants recently said she just starts writing and doesn’t use the list. Great!
Often when I am engaging in art that activates my creative brain, the beginning of something I want to say starts whispering in the back of my head and when I can only hear the whisper and not the art I’m consuming, I try to start writing. That works for me, but I am not you! Maybe one day.
Most of what I try to facilitate about creativity comes from cartoonist, teacher and MacArthur genie Lynda Barry. She seems most interested in helping people access their own “image world” through not just art consumption, but creation. Everyone already is an artist, already a poet, you just have to (re)introduce yourself to those parts of you. What’s the worst that could happen?
4. So here you go. Poems in your inbox.
What happens at the workshop is special, and the prompts that come out of it are honed with that group of fab Zoom people. As one participant recently said:
“I have been going to writing workshops for 20 years and this is the best one I've ever been to hands down. Too bad I don't have a lot of extra time to show up on a regular basis. So I appreciate you sending out the after email as to what transpired.”
So that’s what this is, the email as to what transpired!
5. Hey thanks!
We have been doing these workshops almost every two weeks since April 2020. You can find an index of all those writing prompts here and here. That’s at least 120 DIFFERENT model poems and prompts. But even if you don’t do the writing prompts, the model poems are diverse in voice and style and worth clicking around.
With luv,