Happy National Poetry Month!
The first prompt is based on the poem “Uncomplicated Prayer” by Sarah Platenius, in the latest issue of Orion Magazine.
I love this magazine and have been enjoying the spring issue, Rites of Nature. Some of the articles and poems are available on their website for free.
Here is an excerpt from Sarah’s poem:
In the ditch, I tiptoe past
Pacific tree frogs,
chorus of Zen monks,
careful not to interrupt,
their uncomplicated prayer.
Write an uncomplicated prayer of your own. This could be a short poem or a paragraph? Who shows up in your uncomplicated prayer? Who is your audience? Is your uncomplicated prayer about a complicated topic, like climate change? Write for 5 minutes.
I am currently reading Ben Goldfarb’s Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter (Chelsea Green). I started it last year and am finally getting back to finishin it. This book is loaded with information and well written. I recommend!
Over the weekend, at EWU’s Get Lit! Festival in Spokane, I moderated a workshop panel called The Joy of Writing Animals. One of the prompts we offered was an acrostic poem focused on animals. Henrietta Goodman and Ryan Scariano shared their joint acrostic project and you can read some of Henrietta’s poems on Terrain. org. Here is one on Urchins:
Urchin
Unbrained but not unsexed. The urchin’s teeth can grind through rock—his ball and socket spines
Rotate like hips and shoulders. Watch where you step. Despite his name, he’s no hedgehog, no
Cute elf or wild-haired Dickensian waif. Close, though, to Cupid, with arrows and no conscience.
He’ll sting, but wait—as fossil, he’s apotropaic, an amulet smooth as a wasp gall, an egg. Pain
Inoculates until its needles finally invert. Your bloom sharpens while his thunder petrifies.
Newly spined, immune, you wear his remnant as admonition—no bolt will ever strike you so again.
Now it’s your turn!
Choose an animal and try your own acrostic poem. This may seem a little child-like at first, but trust me! Write the animal along the left margin. Each letter will be the start of a new line (as seen above). This may be a starting point for you, but the acrostic form can be a fun way to play with language and focus on specific details about a creature you have known or one you haven admired or researched from afar. Do you want to write about a wild or domestic animal? Is the poem going to be in the voice of the animal or will there be a narrator?
Write for 15-20 minutes and see what happens. This could be a good exercise for getting unstuck or the start to a series of poems!
As an additional exercise, think about why and how animals give you joy? Do you find it hard or easy to write about animals? Who has the right to write about animals and how do we give other creatures agency in our own creative work?
You may also enjoy this recent issue of the About Place Journal. The theme for this issue is the “more-than-human world” and I appreciate how the various pieces tackle point-of-view & voice:
https://aboutplacejournal.org/issues/the-more-than-human-world/
Happy writing & reading!