Let’s Move the Needle: An Activism Handbook for Artists, Creatives, and Makers
by Shannon Downey (aka Badass Cross Stitch)
You don’t need to identify as an artist, creative, or maker to read this book. Read it as An Activism Handbook.
Shannon is wise and funny, opinionated and knowledgeable. She doesn’t just talk the talk, she walks the walk…and has been for years.
“Build community and make change!” — that’s what it’s all about.
We’ve got this. Let’s go.
‘Prize Malted Brown’ by Owen Simmons from The Book of Bread (1903)
It was my turn to offer the challenge to the Inklings. Newly in love with the Public Domain Image Archive, I suggested that each poet plug a color into the search bar and use one of the images as her inspiration. Like Molly and Heidi, I found that searching for more esoteric colors like aubergine gave no results. So I searched “brown” and got this slice of “Prize Malted Brown” and a small poem about baking.
But that last line got me thinking about how baking bread is like writing, which is also “all process” and this draft happened:
So here, on a virtual plate, I offer you not one, but TWO slices today!
Here’s what the rest of the Inklings came up with, if life gave them the elbow room this month to write:
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Carol has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Beyond LiteracyLink.
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The Poetry Sisters’ challenge for January was to write a tan-ku (or tanku), which isn’t so much a form as it is a conversation between two forms, tanka and haiku, and which can be written in conversation between two poets, as our mentor text was. Since our overarching theme for 2025 is In Conversation, this seemed like a good place to begin the year.
This poem spent its first dozens of drafts tangled in unnecessary didacticism. There were lots of conversations in the poem, and lots of (not always nice) conversations between me and the poem. Then the poem and I decided that we’d leave it to you, the reader, to discover whatever conversation these words might whisper to you. We remembered that sometimes you can say more by saying less.
Here’s what the rest of the crew came up with:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Jan has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at bookseedstudio.
The image is via Unsplash.
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I’ve adopted Molly’s strategy of using Wordle guesses as writing prompts. Thursday’s final word sparked deeper thinking about fire. The images from Los Angeles are haunting as are the stories of the loss of Black middle class neighborhoods that embodied the American dream of generational wealth. I grieve all the non-human lives that have been extinguished and uncounted and which float now in the air as smoke and ash.
Fire destroys, yet fire is also how we describe love and passion, the urge to create, and the desire to do better. We sing around campfires and we light candles in our religions. Giant sequoias and lodgepole pines need fire in order to release their seeds and regenerate.
Fire is complicated.
Process notes:
I’ve been writing mostly haiku for the first month and a half of #poemsforpersistence, but I’m feeling the urge to return to cheritas.
Today’s poem is comprised of three linked cheritas in which I answered my question of despair, “How is this all going to turn out?!?!” with what can seem grim in stanza/poem one; with the conundrum of the two faces of fire in stanza/poem two (and I’m pretty sure you’re savvy enough to realize I’m not just writing about literal fire); with, in stanza/poem three, the necessity for some kind of answer that can be ongoing and joyous (since…see stanza/poem one).
The image is another from The Public Domain Image Archive.
Tricia has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at The Miss Rumphius Effect.
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Labyrinth
Left, right, left
Around and
Back
Your eyes on the path
Rhythm of steps matching breaths
In, out, in
Now the curves
Tighten and you find yourself
Here
(c) Mary Lee Hahn, 2025 draft
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I didn’t write much this week, between horror of the world burning down (both literally and figuratively), the joy of TWO snow days, and the sorrow of all the goodbyes for Jimmy Carter.
I dropped this image into a blank post yesterday evening after getting a little lost (somewhat like my poem, actually) in the newly released Public Domain Image Archive. Inspired this morning by Margaret and her students, I leaned into our old friend the acrostic. Like her post title declares, “Sometimes Acrostic Form Works!”
Kat Apel has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup all the way from Australia! No snow days there right now!
Welcome to the 2025 edition of Poetry Friday! I’m thrilled to host the party and I can’t wait to see what dreams, resolutions, and rituals you bring to this potluck of poetry!
My dreams for 2025 include travel, scraps of fabric that become something else, and a garden filled with more native perennials. My resolutions, which trend towards the suggestion end of the mandatory –> suggestion spectrum, involve some painting, some art journaling, some stitching, some poetry reading, and a particular bi-weekly exercise class. Our New Year ritual is to listen to Strauss waltzes all day long on our local classical radio station, then end the day watching the Vienna Philharmonic New Year’s Concert on PBS. It doesn’t feel like a new year until we’ve clapped along to the Radetzky March.
Last year, Heidi invited the Inklings to participate in her family’s Yuletide celebration with a mobile of poetry prompts for Solstice through New Year’s Day. I shared my drafts for Generosity and Laughter last year.
For this month’s Inklings challenge, we returned to the mobile for new inspiration. I chose “What wisdom do you yearn for?” on 12/30 for my poem.
Here’s what the rest of the Inklings came up with, if life gave them the elbow room this month to write:
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
And here’s the roundup of all the First Poetry Friday of the New Year posts:
The Poetry Sisters’ challenge for this month was to write a haibun. Here’s what the rest of the crew came up with:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Michelle has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at MoreArt4All.
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Jone has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Jone Rush MacCulloch.
Thanks to everyone who signed up to host roundups in the first half of 2025!
Emily Dickinson’s birthday was on 12/10 and this was the poem on The Writer’s Almanac. I borrowed all of Emily’s capitalized words (except the ones that begin the lines) and created this draft of a golden shovel:
Linda has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at A Word Edgewise.
Thanks to all who volunteered to host the Poetry Friday roundup Jan-June 2025. The roundup is filled!
A(nother) Year of Reading 