Tag: poetry

1 in 12, A poetry Challenge for 2016

1 in 12, A poetry Challenge for 2016

I want you to write one poem for 2016. Just one. But I want you to write it 12 times.

Here is the challenge, write a poem each month, the same poem. Don’t look at the previous ones, just tuck them away. Bring yourself back to the same moment, the same raw energy 12 times, 12 different moments over a year, and write.

What you’ll get at the end of the year is a small glimpse at yourself over the year. You’ll have one poem, but 12 sides to it.

How to start:

  • Use the same first line for each poem
  • Use the same title for each poem
  • Use the same idea, but it has to be specific, so not “this is a poem about my mom” but rather, “this is a poem about that time my mom drove us to the park and I fell”
  • Take a poem you have already written, and simply re-write it

All of these, each month, from memory. The purpose is two-fold: you will have poems at the end of the year to look at; the monthly influences will trickle in to your word choice and decisions: the happiness, anger, frustrations, the outside world and your inside thoughts, bringing a different glimpse to 2016.

It is telephone with yourself, but where you are hoping to have some variation from start to finish. Line lengths, word choices, even entire stanzas will come and go as the year does.

And to play with it. Have fun with it.

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Poetry, Emotion and Editing

We often associate poetry with a more pure out pouring of the mind, or soul, than other forms of writing. For this reason, most who approach it tend to link the work emotionally with themselves.

The result can be an over weighing of comments, criticisms and reactions to the work, since the work is seen, not as it is–a piece of art–but rather the person themselves.

In this, it is often difficult to approach younger poets about there work, as I have found. Some will take any writing advice with the wrong heart.

One of my writer friends is fond of saying “we bleed on the page,” which I think is a good analogy.

We have to dig inside for these things, whether we are writing a poem about our past, a fictional character, drawing on forgotten fears–we dig, deep. That is only part of the creation.

The words on the page are now their own, they stand or fall now independent of the person. The poet needs to treat them, to honor them, as such. A poem about the last moments of your Grandmother’s life deserves the same editorial afflictions as one about a flower in a field. The personal matter–while important to the creation of the work–cannot be a roadblock to its maturation.

A first draft is owed a critical eye on diction, structure–an eye on the art, not the moment that birthed it.

So take that emotion and do what you will with it–bleed onto the page. But remember, when the blood dries, it is no different than any other ink. Take from it art that is full alive, that stands on its own right.

Long Distance Drunks

It was late one night when I got home from the bar. Rough day? I don’t remember, just knew the girl took the keys and I ordered another drink.

By the time we got home it was already after 11, and a quick glance at the internet reminded me that there was some deadline that night… right, the Bukoswki tribute anthology. I had a story for that… no… poem.

I checked the guidelines, but it didn’t say anything about poems. Time was ticking, and I said, fuck it, did a few quick edits and sent it anyways.

What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire was my introduction to Bukowski, and a book I carried around for several months. He brought something to me, to my work, that had been missing in the halls of poetry workshops. He brought a type of humanity that my readings had overlooked. He has stained me in the best possible way.

But don’t take my word for it. Go, read. Check out this tribute by Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing and see others influenced as well.

Long Distance Drunks – Edited by Max Booth III

http://amzn.com/0986059447