The Poetry Sisters’ Challenge for this month was to write ekphrastic poems from photos we shared with each other. This happens to be one of the photos I shared, and while it is a glorious and whimsical sky, my poem took me in other, more mournful directions. Such is the nature of ekphrastic poems. Whatever the image prompts is where the poem goes.
Here’s Tricia’s poem, and Tanita’s poem, and Liz’s poem.
Susan has this week’s end-of-August Poetry Friday roundup at Chicken Spaghetti.
The Inklings’ challenge this month was simultaneously issued by Catherine, by Ada Limón, and by Mo Daley at Ethical ELA.
Catherine charged us with joining Ada Limón’s Poet Laureate project, “You Are Here.” The Library of Congress website describes it as a “project is for everyone, and I hope people of all ages—poets and nonpoets—will feel moved to write their own response to the “You Are Here” prompt. It’s simple: What would you write in response to the landscape around you?
On Day Three of Ethical ELA’s Open Write last week, Mo Daley challenged writers to try an X Marks the Spot Poem: “Find a print article from a magazine that interests you…Once you have chosen your article, simply draw an X through the page. You will then write your poem using the words touching your X.” I printed the full text of Ada Limón’s challenge to receive my X, and the words that touched the X are italicized in my poem:
“I believe the way we respond to this crucial moment on our planet could define humanity forever. In conceiving of my signature project, I wanted something that could both praise our sacred and natural wonders and also speak the complex truths of this urgent time. It’s my hope that You Are Here will do just that,” Limón said. “You Are Here: Poetry in the Parks aims to deepen our connection to nature through poetry, and You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World is an anthology that speaks to the many different ways we are nature too. It may seem easier to surrender to the overwhelm of the world’s challenges right now, but I believe that singing out, offering something back to the earth, noticing our connection to the planet, could help us all move forward together in a powerful way.”
Limón said this project is for everyone, and she hopes people of all ages — poets and non-poets — will feel moved to write their own responses to the You Are Here prompt. It’s simple: What would you write in response to the landscape around you? People can share their responses on social media if they choose, using the hashtag #YouAreHerePoetry.
“Above all, this project is about rising to this moment with hope, the kind of hope that will echo outwards for years to come,” Limón said.
Here’s what the other Inklings did with this month’s challenge:
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Laura has a book birthday and this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Poems For Teachers. Congratulations, Laura!
**Make a note that Amy LV with have the October 4 Poetry Friday roundup, not me. We’ll be traveling, and Amy generously agreed to host the roundup that week.
Funny thing happens when family visits for the week: suddenly it’s Friday and you haven’t even begun the Poetry Sisters challenge! Luckily, this is the month we chose classified ad haiku/senryu.
These poems could also work for Ada Limon’s #youarehere project, because they give two glimpses of our back yard: three kinds of milkweed, empty again this year of monarchs, and a back porch covered with acorn litter. The tree next door, which overhangs our yard, is heading into a mast year — the branches are heavy with clumps of acorns that look like bunches of tan grapes. Lots have begun to fall and get nibbled by the resident squirrels and chipmunks, along with the hickory nuts from neighbor’s OTHER overhanging tree.
I’m not sure who’s in for this month’s challenge, but here are the Poetry Sister links just in case:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Marcie has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup.
Heidi’s challenge for the Inklings this month was to “write a short postcard poem with choice details of your vacation/holiday/getaway/escape location and activities. Conclude with “Wish you were here” or some variation!”
This past week, I spent two unplanned days in NYC. The actual plan was to go to an in-person workshop at Tatter on Saturday and then come right home that evening. But mid-afternoon on Saturday, my flight was cancelled. No problem, except that the two known-to-me hotels were booked up for the night. My third choice, the Hotel Beacon, was A-Mazing, so that made up for it all and I looked forward to a fun bonus museum day on Sunday before returning home that night…which was not to be, though, because my flight was cancelled AGAIN. After a trip out to The Mayhem Known as JFK in the Midst of Numerous Flight Cancellations (see photo taken from the AirTrain), I wound up back at one of my known-to-me hotels with a flight booked for Monday afternoon. I was just about over making lemonade, but I (metaphorically) sucked it up and spent a delightful couple of semi-cool morning hours walking in Central Park before spending the rest of the afternoon and evening in airports and airplanes.
My response to Heidi’s prompt is not a short postcard poem. It long, like my trip became.
Here’s what the other Inklings did with this month’s challenge:
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Jan has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Bookseedstudio.
The Poetry Sisters challenge this month was Wabi-Sabi. I just re-read the prompt and realized that Wabi-Sabi was supposed to be the title of the poem. Oh, well. I’ll claim the third truth of Wabi-Sabi — nothing is perfect!
In his book Wabi-Sabi Simple, Richard Powell described wabi-sabi as a philosophy that acknowledges a lifestyle that appreciates and accepts three simple truths: “Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.” I embrace this philosophy whole-heartedly in my gardening.
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Lawn
dappled
with clover.
Exuberant
mish-mash flower beds.
One raised bed all fennel —
buffet for black swallowtails.
Three kinds of milkweed for monarchs.
Landscaping by Wabi-Sabi, Inc.
© Mary Lee Hahn, 2024
Here’s how the rest of the Poetry Sisters Wabi’d their Sabi:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Sara @ Read Write Believe
and Tricia has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Next month, we’re writing haiku that give away something. Haiku that could be found on your local Buy Nothing FaceBook page, or at the curb during your community’s Free-cycle event.
Molly gave the Inklings our June challenge — a quote from a talk by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Molly reported that essentially he said, “Write something narrative and by narrative I mean something that has story and observation to it…write about the first time you saw somebody who’s become a you to you…a you that you love to say…detail what else could be seen”… and let those other things convey what it all meant to you.
After listing all the YOUs in my life and writing about a bajillion drafts, I decided that my YOU for this poem would be the process of figuring out what to write about. My YOU is inspiration itself.
I’m scheduling this post on Tuesday because on Wednesday I leave for a week spent with family. I won’t be able to comment until it’s almost time for another Poetry Friday, but I still can’t wait to see what the other Inklings do with this challenge.
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Tracey has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Tangles & Tales.
The Poetry Sisters’ challenge this month was to write in the style of Lucille Clifton’s homage to my hips, and choose our own body parts to pay homage to.
Listen and watch as she reads her poem. That grin (almost a smirk) tricks you into thinking she’s poking fun at herself, but nothing could be further from the truth. She writes against ageism and sexism and racism. Her phrase “I like to celebrate the wonderfulness that I am” became my battle cry. I am who I am who I was who I will be, but I AM HERE! Against all odds, I have come this far, and I’m going to carry on singing at the top of my voice…well, insofar as an introvert can manage, at least.
Here’s what body parts the rest of the Poetry Sisters are celebrating:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Janice has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Salt City Verse.
Image via Unsplash.
Linda gave us our May challenge. After spinning the wheel of chance that paired us up with another Inkling, we sent off a poem and received a poem. Then, we were tasked to “Fiddle with, play with, tinker, tear-apart, be inspired or stumped by the poem.”
Here’s what Heidi sent me:
Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight,
that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.
~Mary Oliver
Golden Haystack
It’s not common, it’s not every
day
I come across words in which I
see
sparks or
hear
a sounding something
that
opens the locked box of a poem. This one more
or
less demands that I pry at buried boxes, more or less
kills
me.
This year delight will not stay with
me. I can see it, hear it, feel the gauze of delight
that
surrounds me; I try to hold it but it leaves
me
like a pin dropping, like a coin rolling, like
a
sharp momentary needle
in
my arm. I am vaccinated against joy. I search the
haystack
daily for shine, ordinary evening stealing the keys of
light.
Heidi Mordhorst 2021
Is that not the most perfect encapsulation of what The COVID Year was like? How our creativity was muffled and elusive?
I chose to respond to Heidi’s Haystack with some hay bales (a bit like last week’s pebbles), created from handfuls of straw, first from her poem, and then from the Mary Oliver quote.
Golden Hay Bales
There will always be this –
even in a year
devoid of delight,
when hope will
hide its face behind a mask, not
letting me remember to cup my hand around its flame – I can stay
as malleable as the candle with
wax dripping, flowing, creating a new me.
.
a loaded paintbrush, a sharpened pencil, a
threaded needle –
all poised in
the hand of the
maker – her thoughts a loosely massed haystack
of
hope, an undulation of light.
.
Stymied by introspective search,
brushing off the
chaff from life’s haystack
of daily
human indignities, I head for
the garden and its abundance of hopeful shine.
.
Like a crowd bearing purple-flamed torches, every
iris in the bed is poised to bloom. Any day
now I
will wake to see
the torches flaring open like firework explosions or
a hopeful chorus of purple joy I can and yet cannot hear.
©Mary Lee Hahn, 2024
.
It wasn’t until I had finished writing that I saw how light and hope are the twine that holds my bales together.
What a fun challenge! Thank you, Linda. Thank you, Heidi.
Here’s how the rest of the Inklings met Linda’s challenge:
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Buffy Silverman has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup. And because I had a small brain lapse when I put out the call for roundup hosts last December, leaving off June, here is the call for roundup hosts June – December 2024.
The hay bale image is from Wikimedia Commons. (Do you know how hard it is to find pictures of old-school rectangular hay bales? They’re all round now!)
* * *
Edited on Thursday evening to add…a bunch of the torches have flared open. I wish this photo had smell-o-vision!
* * *
all those years
walking in early-morning dark —
does Orion miss me?
* * *
I tend the trillium —
oak’s companions since forest-time —
do they know me?
* * *
insect on the car —
we’ve never met before now —
did you choose me?
* * *
leaf-footed bug —
Leptoglossus oppositus —
what name do you call yourself?
* * *
full moon wakes me —
my face, briefly bathed in moonbeams —
do iris buds feel it, too?
(c) draft, Mary Lee Hahn, 2024
.
The Poetry Sisters’ challenge for this month was inspired by Rebecca Kai Dotlich and Georgia Heard’s, Welcome to the Wonder House. Our mission was to write about “unanswerable questions.” And though life seems often to be one unanswerable question (or unfathomable event) after another, I found it INCREDIBLY hard to write to this prompt. Luckily, Jane Hirschfield was able to offer assistance. In her new book, The Asking, she has several collections of small poems she calls “pebbles.” I’ve found these “pebbles” in several sections of the book, and it must have been more than coincidence that when I turned the page for today’s reading, there was [THIRTEEN PEBBLES]. Thank you, Jane.
Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters are wondering about:
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Ruth has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town.
The image is via Unsplash.
I gave the Inklings their challenge this month. I asked them to “Write a haiku sequence that talks about poetry without mentioning it by name. Here is your mentor text.”
I initially approached the challenge in an entirely left-brained way. Not surprisingly, my attempt fell flat. Once I got that out of my system, I was able to write poetically about writing poetry.
Here’s how the rest of the Inklings met my challenge:
Catherine @Reading to the Core
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Linda @A Word Edgewise
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Irene has this week’s Poetry (aka “The best words in the best order.” –Samuel Coleridge) Friday roundup at Live Your Poem.
A(nother) Year of Reading 
