Prompt progress, week 5

Whoops, what happened to Week 4? Well, I wasn’t able to get out of the office in time to make it to last week’s workshop, unfortunately.

This week’s workshop focused on poetry, both as prompts and inspiration. We also had more exercises than we usually do. One in particular brought home how much of writing is about the choices we make: the choice of words, of form, of structure. What to leave in, what to remove, what to change and rearrange.

We were given a paragraph from a writer that we were supposed to redo into an unstructured poetry form, choosing where to break lines and deciding the rhythm. We talked about where we broke the lines, how those choices change the intent/tone/etc. Then we were given the paragraph in its originally written form…a poem.  It was interesting to see where we chose to break lines versus how the original poet did, what we chose to emphasize versus the original.

Poetry isn’t something I spend time writing, although I do enjoy reading it. Which meant this week’s workshop was going to be a challenge for me. I passed on reading almost everything I wrote this week (and consequently, I won’t have a lot to post here). That’s okay, though. It was a great exercise and pushed me to stretch.

One of the exercises was writing haikus. I actually really enjoy writing haikus — who doesn’t, right? — and I do haikus because I’m bored, or my mind is wandering in a meeting, or to pass time in the car. We had eight minutes to write as many as we wanted, but tonight was a struggle. As an option, we were given a grab bag to pull random words out of for inspiration, but my words didn’t help much. Just wasn’t feelin’ it, as Robyn (the facilitator) would say. I wrote three, but just read this one.

Prompts (from the grab bag, although I didn’t end up using these): moving          friendly           free

oppressing grief, numb
underneath, anger scares me
cannot let it out

Robyn told us something interesting during this part. Write Around Portland does work with prison populations, among others, and she said that during a particular workshop she was doing, several of the participants kept getting thrown in solitary confinement, which meant they had their journals taken from them during that time. It was understandably upsetting to to these inmates, both because someone else could be reading their journals, but also because they wouldn’t be able to write while they were in solitary. So she taught them how to do haikus, because you can do haikus in your head and anyone can memorize a haiku. They could write in their heads — something no one could take from them — and when they got out, they’d then be able to write them down in their journals.

I will never think of haikus in the same way.

The exercise for the next piece derived from another poem we read that was originally written in Spanish. We have a member of the group who speaks fluent Spanish so she read both the original and then the translation. The exercise was to use the same format of the poem, or if we preferred prose, we were given two prompts. I did end up using prose, but I think the poetry focus of the workshop was filtering through nonetheless because as I read it aloud, I realized it could’ve been broken out in some kind of unstructured form. So I rewrote it in that form for comparison as I was typing it for this post. Which was an interesting little exercise of its own.

Prompts:  after the storm              in wet earth

After the storm, relief. Violence of elements, an echo of remaking the world, and then stillness when life begins again.

She can feel it, the storm, waiting to break inside her in a tempest, sure to fell trees and flood creation in despair. She holds it back, barely. Afraid to unleash it, yet wanting the release that comes after. If she can survive it, life begins again. In the stillness. After the storm.

in unstructured poetry form:

After the storm,
relief.
Violence of elements,
an echo of remaking
the world, and
then stillness when
life begins
again.

She can feel it,
the storm,
waiting to break
inside her in
a tempest,
sure to fell trees
and flood creation in
despair.

She holds it back,
barely.
Afraid to unleash it,
yet wanting the release
that comes after.
If she can survive it,
life begins
again.

In the stillness.
After the storm.

Comments

[Anne Hawley]

I am much struck by the emotional sequence of your haiku and your longer unstructured poem, both of which are very evocative.

And now I will never think of haiku the same way again either. What a moving story.

[Writer's Cramp]

I definitely had a theme, didn't I?

I thought the haiku story might interest you, especially since I know you enjoy composing them, too.