OctPoWriMo Day 30

 

Today's theme is Simple Pleasures. I find that the older I become, the more I appreciate simple pleasures. My list includes all sorts of things like spending time in nature, spending time with loved ones, reading, and writing. It's such an easy way to reset and find peace especially during hectic times. I also find inspiration in each of these activities. 

The idea of simple is key. Taking advantage of opportunities imbedded in everyday life makes these rewards that much easier, but there is an element of commitment involved. Self-care isn't always at the top of the priority list however much it should be. A moment spent on things that make you happy is well worth the investment. What would you include on your list of Simple Pleasures? Are these activities you make time for or do you take things as they come? How do Simple Pleasures enhance your life?

Word Prompts:

joy

serenity

rewards

cost

comfort

Suggested Poetry Form: free verse

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions: you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

OctPoWriMo 2022: Day 29 - Birthing Something New

 

We all know the feeling of writers' block and that apparent inability to 'birth something new'. Some of us only feel able to write while experiencing certain emotions. Others find it difficult to get into that 'flow state'. Others suffer from the time-suck (and indeed 'motivation-suck') of modern life. 

So how can you get past that so as to re-establish your creative self? The internet abounds with tips, as does the website of Purdue University, which recommends, among other things, remembering that it's a first draft and that it therefore doesn't have to be perfect - or even have a name. Writing is also hard work - waiting until you are in that mythical state of 'inspiration' just won't work. And, of course, you should use prompts like the ones provided by the OctPoWriMo team!

You can also try a new poetic form to try to liberate your creative soul a little: lots of places, such as the ever-reliable Writers' Digest, will walk you through many. If you're pushed for time, don't worry - not all of them are long or complex. Blackout poetry, in particular, is a great way of 'birthing something new' from an existing text.

Finally, you may wish to take inspiration from a life event. The immediate period after my son was born in 2018 was an especially fertile time (pun intended!) as I felt able to write a lot of poetry about his birth and early days. I am currently pregnant with my second son (and indeed final child) and feel I should write about this pregnancy, given that I will never go through this again.

Word prompts

Affirm

Grow

Regenerate

Slip

Appear

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions: you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

Happy writing!

Bianca

OctPoWriMo 2022: Day 28 - Courageous and Daring

I'm an Aries, and as such 'courageous' and 'daring' should at least theoretically be my middle names. But it took me a long while to grow into either of those notions and even as an adult I still often feel that I have a long way to go in these respects.

Those born under the sign of Aries are also reputed to be impatient, impulsive, argumentative, self-involved, intolerant, and insensitive (thanks, www.horoscopes.lovetoknow.com !) - and I have always thought of these traits as being more true of myself. But allow me to think on the positive side for a second: if the list I found has any grain of truth to it, it also says that we Rams are independent, dynamic, charismatic, enthusiastic, warmhearted, and quick-witted - which are traits I have also been told by others are true about myself. Maybe now even 'confident' would apply too.

So what is your star sign? What are people born under that sign 'supposed' to be like? (I know it's hardly an exact science.) Do 'courageous' and 'daring' figure within that framework? Do you consider yourself to be that way? Do you think any of us is especially 'fated' to be these things, or can we make ourselves so?

Famed Instapoet Atticus has already written poems for each sign of the zodiac; now, perhaps, it's our turn. Shape poems might work well here - why not fashion a poem about courage and daring into the shape of a ram, or the outline of water (those born under Aquarius are also known for being pretty brave)? Or, if you feel your zodiac sign does not describe you, or says you 'shouldn't' be courageous and daring when you are, perhaps flip the shape.

Word prompts:

Fire

Speak

Strength

Brave

Pause

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions: you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

Happy writing!

Bianca

OctPoWriMo 2022: Day 22 - Surrender Self Limitations

What limitations do you impose upon yourself? How do you break free of these? And how do you know if you have?

Self-confidence is a huge factor in enabling anyone to break free of the chains that bind them. I think I felt far more limited in my early teens, when I was still trying to figure out who I was, and as a result, probably fulfilled far less of my potential than I should have. Probably by the age of 15 or so, though, I realised that people will leave. And yes, it is sad. But that you cannot let these moments in life break you for months or even years. And that people will always find a way to criticise you no matter what you do - so you may as well do what you want, or what you think is right. And both of these epiphanies were highly liberating. I did more. I laughed more. I loved more. And I lived more as a result. 

Even as an adult, setting long-term goals - and writing them down - is enormously liberating in terms of surrendering any limitations you might be imposing on yourself. Accept that life will get in the way sometimes - and that short-term projects like OctPoWriMo aside (!), setting goals over six months or a year allows more wiggle rooms for goals to be achieved and limitations to be smashed through.

So you might want to format your poem accordingly, to look like a list of resolutions or goals - or you may want to try the catena rondo form, courtesy of Robin Skelton (The Shapes of Our Singing, 2002), who is credited with inventing the form. Catena means 'chain', and rondo means 'circle' - which might appear to run counter to the notion of breaking free from those metaphorical chains of self-limitation. But hear me out.

The form itself symbolises the chains that bind us thanks to its repetitive rhyme scheme of AbbA per quatrain. The first line of each quatrain is also the final line of the quatrain. The second line of each quatrain is the first line of the next quatrain. And the final quatrain should repeat the first, word for word.

However, there are also aspects of the form that symbolise breaking free of these recurring vicious circles which trap our thinking. You can have however many quatrains you want. And there are no rules for metre, line length, or subject matter. So exercise your freedom here - or just do a free write if you prefer the whole poem, structurally speaking, to be a metaphor for surrendering these self-limitations. Maybe you want to invert an existing form or just try something completely different. The rondeau is a similar form - a famous example being Dunbar's "We Wear The Mask", reproduced below:

Word prompts:

Free

Live

Untangle

Cast off

Breathe

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions: you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

Happy writing!

Bianca

OctPoWriMo 2022: Day 21 - Sanctuary Within

 

I read a lot of Jostein Gaarder and Paulo Coelho as a teen, and was also introduced to the works of major philosophers via the highly accessible 'The Consolations of Philosophy' by Alain de Botton. The bitesized maxims of Khalil Gibran and Marcus Aurelius also deeply appealed and my religious studies lessons were a further source of sanctuary, wherein we learned about the six major world religions (Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism). Buddhism's focus on meditation was particularly attractive as it took me away from the tumultuous hormonal changes of adolescence. I would spend hours practising what we might today call 'mindfulness' and reaching 'flow state', not just through writing poetry but also through the sensory enhancements of music and incense. I also spent many an hour in private prayer and contemplation.

I would also find physical places of sanctuary, whether in church, in a trusted teacher's office, in a letter to a friend, or within nature. These experiences are so valuable to teens and I urge parents and teachers today not to question this, dismiss it, or shut teens out: they are sorely needed. We might call them 'safe spaces' today.

Though no longer religious myself, I still greatly value the practices of yoga, meditation, mindfulness and hypnotherapy - all of which constitute a form of sanctuary, along with writing. Silence itself is a type of sanctuary too.

So my question to you is - what is your sanctuary (mental or physical)? What does it look like? What does it feel like when you are there?

The notion of sanctuary, and its associated 'flow state', lends today's poem well to a free write scenario. Just sit down somewhere and let the words flow - you can always reshape them later.

Word prompts

Heartbeat

Time

Peace

Breath

Resurface

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions: you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

Happy writing!

Bianca

OctPoWriMo Day 20

Photo by MDragonwillow

 Shadow moves through our lives. When we stop to take a look at our shadow, you may discover they are the source of our greatest gifts. It's all about perspective.

POETRY PROMPTS

Shadow Jumping is a way to move through your Shadow aspects and discovering that's where we find the gold. What triggers you? Feel it. The trigger is one way to find shadows. When they pop up it is your opportunity to take a closer look. How is it shaped? Taste? Feel? Then jump to the next. Write for ten minutes about the last time you were triggered. 

WORD PROMPTS 

Perspective

Shadow

Dance

Jumping 

Senses

Tantalizing

Scrumptious 

Poetry Type - Shape poetry write a sensory poem all about your senses in relation to your Shadow, how does it feel, taste, hear?

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions, you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag, #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

Much Love to You,

Morgan Dragonwillow

Read, Dance, Write, Repeat.

Where I'll be writing poetry: A Writer's Universe

OctPoWriMo Day 19

 

Today's theme is Nourish the Soul. What do you do to stop and refuel your soul? One of the ways I do this is by taking a nature hike. My daughter and I did about three miles this morning and it was perfect. It's one of the top ten days of the year, somewhere between Summer and Fall. The air was crisp and the leaves on the trees were bursting with color. It felt so good to walk in the woods and absorb all the sights, sounds, and smells. There's something special about connecting with nature, stretching your legs, and leaving everything else behind. This definitely nourished my soul.

What does Nourish the Soul mean to you? How do you do this and how does it make you feel?

Word Prompts:

cultivate

soothe

care for

self-care

creativity

experience

Suggested Poetry Forms:

Haiku or Mirrored Refrain

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions, you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag, #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

OctPoWriMo - Day 18 Perfectly Imperfect

The pressure of perfection looms large in today's social media driven world with the highly curated perceptions, filtered visions and auto-tuned words.  So often, this freezes my muse in her tracks - empty pages, blank canvases and stifled expression the result.  

So...Let go of the desire for perfection and relish in the beauty of imperfect.

The invitation today is to take a cue from the Japanese philosophy/esthetic of Wabi-Sabi - a concept that motions us to constantly search for the beauty in imperfection and to accept the more natural cycle of life.  It reminds us that all things including us and life itself, are impermanent, incomplete and imperfect.

Wabi - the beauty in a simple, perhaps rustic sense, often with intrinsic flaws or asymmetries.

Sabi - the beauty that stems from age; the patina, the changes due to use and time that renders something more beautiful.  Even the appreciation of the cycles of life as well as the careful, artful mending of damages like in the golden repair Kintsugi 

Poetry Prompt: 

Explore an aspect of Wabi-Sabi - perhaps the beauty of flaws or the beauty of the effects of passing time that you have observed.  The hands of your grandmother as she knits, the gap toothed smile of a laughing child, the once white picket fence...

Poetry Form:

Haibun

Word prompts:

Flaw

Asymmetry

Weathered

Patina

Release

Wrinkle

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions: you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

Happy writing!

OctPoWriMo - Day 16 - Silly and Sacred

“The word silly derives from the Greek word ‘selig', meaning blessed. There is something sacred in being able to be silly.” – Paul Pearsall

Poetry Prompt: 

Take a moment and notice your breath and think about your own laughter. When was the last time you laughed? Where does laughter come from in your body (your chest, your throat, your belly)? How does it feel when you laugh? What does it sound like? Now think about the laughter of someone that you love. How does it sound? Do they laugh differently? How does it feel to be in the presence of their laughter, to hear it or to feel the vibrations of it? As you sit within those musings on laughter — your own and your loved one(s) — pay attention to the way that your body feels. Where does your joy live? 

Let’s consider for a moment longer the question, “What does your laughter sound like?”  Do you laughed freely?  Loudly?   Revel in the bliss of doubled-over, ever bubbling up giddiness, the connection of another's shared laughter? 

Or have you been shamed, judged and told to restrain your laughter? 

Use this exploration for a poem.

Poetry Form:

Blitz Poem

Word prompts:

Sacred

Holy

Laughter

Connection

Revel

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions: you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

Happy writing!

“T

OctPoWriMo Day 15

 

If you look up the meaning of "fear," you'll find several lists of acronyms in addition to definitions. Two of my favorites are Face Everything and Respond and Face Everything and Rejoice. Fear is such a powerful emotion and absolutely has its place, but sometimes our fears can prevent us from reaching our goals. How can we use this as a tool rather than a hindrance?

I found an article that offers tips for dealing with fear and anxiety. Here are some suggestions the site lists:

 Avoid avoidance

Promote positivity

Find meaning

I find comfort in each of these and know that I'm certainly guilty of employing Avoidance as a tool instead of facing things that make me uncomfortable. I'm an expert in finding the positive any any situation, so much so that my children tell me that I live in Sunshine and Rainbow Land (I tell them I love it here). But using positivity to face fears is a twist for me. I suppose that lessens some of the power the fear holds. Finding meaning is what it is all about. What is the fear representing? What's behind it? What can I learn from it?

Today's prompt is Surrending Fear. What happens when we give ourselves permission to let go of fears or even embrace them? Is there a trade-off? What is the reward? How can this be a tool to move yourself forward?

Word Prompts: 

overcome

discover

surrender

accomplish

avoid

promote

meaning

Suggested Poetry Forms:

Terzanelle or The Bop

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions, you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag, #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

OctPoWriMo 2022: Day 14 - Hearing And Listening

In relation to today's prompt, if you listen to others but also take time to hear yourself and your own inner voice, you can use this to help grow your creative self.

How can you 'hear yourself' and also listen to others? Journaling and meditation can be helpful in this regard, along with mindfulness exercises - though I seem to be recommending that combination a lot lately. Yoga also emphasises aspects of meditation which can help you to get closer to your true inner self.

In similar terms, the book 'Hear Yourself' (Prem Rawat; published by HarperCollins) suggests walks in nature and taking a few moments each day to be aware of what you are grateful for - among other methods.

So what forms of writing might allow you to express this process of hearing yourself or listening to others?

Perhaps an epistolary poem (laid out like a letter), or something more dialogic (a poem laid out like a conversation or question and answer session)?

Presumably, though, if you have taken time to listen to yourself, the 'right' form will come to you.

Joining poetry circles is also a great way to listen to others via their constructive feedback on your work; in one study (Vetter & Meacham, 2018), the authors found that reflective conversations are also powerful in helping writers "to construct...knowledge and identities" and that this is "critical practice for...motivation and success". 

So listen and hear more...and grow your creative self.

Word prompts:

Audio

White noise

Chaos

Silence

Paradox

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions: you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

Happy writing!

Bianca

OctPoWriMo Day 13

 My life is often complicated and I forget to breathe. Oh I breathe enough to exist but I mean the kind of conscious breathing with my whole body that brings me back to center, back into balance. 

Photo by MDragonwillow

Poetry Prompt

Faith and flow is the prompt. Faith can mean a lot of things from faith in your religion/spirituality to faith in yourself. Creatively we call being in the flow, being connected to our muse, to spirit, to the Divine. Faith and Flow is a combination of your faith in yourself, in your higher power and connecting to your muse, to your inspiration.  Write for ten minutes about what that means to you and how you can get back into that creative flow when you are feeling stuck. I"m feeling stuck right now because of the things that happened last week, my laptop breaking and the car accident. This prompt is to remind me I need to breath and get back to that place myself.

Word Prompts

Flowing

Spirit

Higher Power

Faith

Believing in yourself

Breathe

Poetry Type - The Blitz is one of my favorite forms and I hope you enjoy playing with it.

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions, you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag, #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

Much Love to You,

Morgan Dragonwillow

Read, Dance, Write, Repeat.

Where I'll be writing poetry: A Writer's Universe

OctPoWriMo Day 12

 I apologize for the lateness of this post. I somehow had it in my head that my next post was later in the month.

The prompt is Distorted Reflections. I think there are times in our lives that the voice in our head gives us a Distorted view of who we are which is nothing like the person we really are.

Word Prompts

Illusions

Twisted

Warp

Contort

Clearly

Take another look

Open your eyes

Poetry type - Minute Poetry 

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions, you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag, #OctPoWriMo on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you and if this is your first year or if you have been with us from the beginning.

Much Love to You,

Morgan Dragonwillow

Read, Dance, Write, Repeat.

Where I'll be writing poetry: A Writer's Universe