I love to write. Most of my writing is for this blog or essays or short stories. I've even written a novel, 50,000 words! Whew! Took me three months to get to the end. Now it sits tucked away while I tend to the other writings in my flock. After all, I can't give preference to one and ignore the others.
Two weekends ago my sis and I attended a writing morning at University of South Alabam, Mobile. Reason 1: another viewpoint from authors; Reason 2: one author was Carolyn Haines, who writes the Bones series of mystery books. She is writer-in-residence at the college. Alas, she spoke about novel writing, a course which I'd had plenty of instruction. What actually peaked my interest was the poetry author, a Sue Brannon Walker (Poet Laureat of Alabama), an exhuberant lady who made writing poetry sooo easy. We did one exercise I've seen on many blogs: the "Where I'm from..." That was answering a series of questions about one's self and writing it in sentence form. She eliminated the sentences,used phrases and clauses. She reminded us how quickly we can write prose and drop lines and eliminate a lot of punctuation and voila! a poem is born. And sure enough it seems easy.
Sunday morning after returning I awoke with a poem in my head. Unfortunately, it wasn't anything we had been introduced to. A limrick. How that got caught in my brain I'll never know. Read on. . .
There once was a horse named Katrina
Who loved prancing in the arena,
But when a lady got on
with nothing but a thong
Katrina behaved like a hyena!
Isn't that disgraceful after an earlier morning of good poetry writing?
Time now to write a more graceful one. Next, writing a poem with only two words per line:
POWER OF SWEETS
I look
At you
And wonder
If I
Can afford
The pounds
I'll earn
From you
Chocolate, Vanilla
Strawberry, Nuts
Oh, gosh
Those bars
Are much
Too much
I know
It's hopeless
To feed
My tummy
I have
To leave
And find
My mommy.
Ok, I gotcha. Improvement. I will have to study Mrs. Walker's students' poetry. Let's see...what page do I want to start with?
2 comments:
Thar was lots of fun. Let's have more.
Dear Vivian, Your energy is inspiring. Keep on doing your thing, your thing, you are amazing! Love, Elaine from Yulan You look wonderful in the pictures.
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