An Invitation to Join "We The Poets"

"We The Poets" started as a weekly poetry workshop for readers of our local internet exchanges, and due to wider ranging interest, I am now widening the catchment area and making it into a blog. Each post has writing exercises and examples of poetry on different topics and themes. You can enter your responses in the "comments" area or personally to me in my contact form and I will do my best to respond.

This is not a class ! A circle implies equals participating in a shared activity, and that is the intention. Any comments from me should be taken with the appropriate amount of salt.

I look forward to hearing your responses.

 

I was thinking how to resurrect  the poetry circles I have gathered over the years for young people. Poetry was an important activity at Tamworth Learning Circles for over twenty years, and I also ran open circles at the Chocorua Library. These days I work with individual students and work on my own writing, sharing some of it on the exchanges.

On turning to this idea again, I am thinking about  the hard winter ahead. We need powerful channels of expression, and some fun too ! This time, I don't feel the need to distinguish between adults and children - at TLC our poetry circles usually spanned the Middle and High School ages, with no lower limit - poetry doesn't require age bands.Yes, there are some adult themes not suited to young minds, but with a little self-censorship the range is wide and the great themes of life, love and death. are all much more accessible to young people than we often give them credit for. Our granddaughter speaks the great themes at just three. .All she is not ready for is the apprehension that there is any difference between poetry and other things we think and say, and how blest she is in that !

"We The Poets" strikes the right chord, I believe. Poetry existed before language, but words gave it a boost. We have a lot to share.

 

 

POETRY THEMES to write to:

I usually suggest two – sometimes they resonate, sometimes not. Write to one or both.

Suggestions: Darkness into Light

The Story of Sleeping Beauty, told your way.

Please indicate whether you would like your contributions to be signed with your own name, with a pseudonym or anonymously. Please do this each time, as I might forget previous requests. I hope that we can all regard the circle as a workshop for mutually supportive equals, but not everyone may feel that way. It is the work that matters. Also, things change !

WORD GAME/EXERCISE POEMS

Here are five words to use in a short poem you can create any way you wish:

Try these words: pull, travel, kind, footfall, depth.

The strict version : no change in word form, you have to use each word exactly as given.

The less strict: minor variations possible: e.g. "pull" could be changed to pulled, pulls, etc.

It is surprising what gems can arise from such exercises. Remember: Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" was written as an exercise !

POEMS YOU'D LIKE TO SHARE

Famous poems, poems we won't know, poets we have never heard of, translations from poets outside our language and culture: each week I shall be asking every participant in the circle to bring a poem to read, recite or hand over to be read. Finding and choosing the weekly poem has often been the most valuable and popular part of the whole process. Have one ready for our first full outing.

 

A POEM TO EXPLORE: (optional, allows more literary study if that attracts. We might include further discussion for those who would like it)

"Sudden Light" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti :

I have been here before,

But when or how I cannot tell:

I know the grass beyond the door,

The sweet keen smell,

The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,—

How long ago I may not know:

But just when at that swallow's soar

Your neck turn'd so,

Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?

And shall not thus time's eddying flight

Still with our lives our love restore

In death's despite,

And day and night yield one delight once more?

pull, travel, kind, footfall, depth

The travel of the sea

The pull of the Earth

The footfall of my kind

The call of the depths -

The matter of profundity

The centering of the world.

The Galaxy

A tattered dragon skin

Thrown across the shoulders of the sky

Scales glistening in the deepest/profoundest night