Poetry Writing Helps Writers in ANY Genre.
One of the most helpful ways to teach writers to be even more clear with their words is to practice packing as much into short phrases as possible. Instead of verbose concepts, I suggest tight, concrete word-bouquets.
I even suggest more wordy writers use twitter for writing practice. I use it myself to practice my own editing skills
I have a rather unique method for writing haiku - actually any form of micropoetry -mindfully. It is a technique I suggest for writers of any genre to use, simply for the playful factor if nothing else.
I wrote the prompt for Poets on the Page and I decided to take my time with the process, since often I write haiku very quickly from whatever the first seventeen syllables that make sense tell me. Since I am facilitating this months poetry mini-challenge, I wanted to mix up my own process in hopes of helping other poets to grow and try new things.
We're playing/crafting/writing from this image prompt. It is a photo I took last week while making a purchase off Craigslist for shelves which brought me to a rather strange to me location.
The image itself burned into my mind so I decided I should not only write from it myself, but I should offer it up to others as well for their writing thoughts.
The first thing I did today was to open the window in one tab and then write five and seven syllable lines in a separate tab.
Here is the beginning of my list:
desert speaks shallow whispers
whithering unread phone books
rusted mailbox wait
always stays empty
green grass mocks dry brown
tumbleweeds prepare
where does rust come from
amidst flowerless landscape
pumpjack ignores it
up down up down up
stillborn mail box
no letters arrive
only phone books come
hopeless year again
door still open, waiting....
I associated the final line with "invitation" but since it was a clunky four syllable word, I searched a thesaurus for other ideas. I quickly filled a half page witih shorter, tighter words meaning the same thing as "invitation" such as bid, request, urge, entice, bait, seduce.
I also looked at words that mean the opposite and got hindrance, repulsion, refusal.
The process of writing down possible words as well as thinking about the image quickly worked their magic and gave birth to the "haiku symphony" you see below:
FILL ME
===
fill me, please. Fill me.
I'm old, rusted, and lonely.
My request? letters.
= = =
RSVP here
Cursive writing party time
(though typing will do)
= = =
urging waters fall
flooding can be dealt with here
dry rust needs her friends
= = =
restore my purpose
my owner has gone silent
desert hospital
Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at a First Friday soon, when it is warmer than it was in December!, in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
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