Poetry Project — February, 2024
Liz Garton Scanlon
by liz
1M ago
This month, my poetry sisters and I decided on epistolary poems — poems written in the form of letters, diary entries, text messages, and the like. And (because February) we thought, why not make them love letters or Valentines? When we met over Zoom to get ourselves started, I thought I was going to write several short poems, all in the voices of the lovers (the dog lover, the sports team lover, the lover of sushi or space or Taylor Swift) — because of how language is specific and personal and contextualized in cool and important ways. So a poem to a dog is going to be ever so different than ..read more
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Poetry Project – January 2024
Liz Garton Scanlon
by liz
2M ago
Hello, friends. I couldn’t be gladder to be back with my Poetry Sisters (and you all!) for another year of poetry prompts. We are kicking off 2024 with ekphrastic poems, inspired by the truly incredible paper artistry performed by Roberto Benavidez. His sculptures are, in fact, piñatas but are so exquisite (and imaginative) (and otherworldly) that surely, I thought, they’re never actually hung and hit, right? Well, sometimes they are, and what that says about the magic of transformation (last year’s theme dies hard!) and the necessary willingness of any creator to make and then let go? I am ag ..read more
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Poetry Project — December, 2023
Liz Garton Scanlon
by liz
3M ago
I feel so lucky to have spent another year writing and talking about poetry with my poetry sisters. For all of our lives and worries and distance, we are able to do this one small thing — to make sense of something, to make something make sense once a month. I’m so grateful. We are wrapping up 2023 by writing an Elfchen — a very spare German form, otherwise known as an Elevenie. Elfchens are five lines and eleven words long. Some sources leave it at that, others suggest starting with a thought, object, color or the like, and expanding upon it. I took that as my starting point, focused on trans ..read more
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Poetry Project — November, 2023
Liz Garton Scanlon
by liz
4M ago
This month, we had the pleasure of writing “In the style of…” Valerie Worth. A spare, careful, tender observer of things, Valerie Worth may have been best known for her Small Poems (and all the subsequent collections of small poems that followed!) I find this kind of work hugely satisfying to read and to write (and, I know, the hugely reads a bit ironic since we’re talking about very, very spare work.) I so love zooming in and attending to something — anything — with a focus so particular it pretty much is the same as love. As always, our larger thematic focus for the year is transformation, a ..read more
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Poetry Project — October, 2023
Liz Garton Scanlon
by liz
5M ago
Our poetry assignment this month was tricky — a poetic game of sorts called a Bouts-Rimés. Each of us contributed not just rhyming words, but purposefully incongruent ones, and we were then asked to write sonnets using those very words as the end rhymes. Our list of words included: profuse/abtruse chartreuse/truce incline/shine resign/supine various/gregarious hilarious/precarious ceasefire/quagmire higher/dryer transform/barnstorm uniform/conform humility/futility nobility, tranquility perturb/superb reverb/disturb And I chose to write a Shakespearean sonnet, which required me to pluck 2 word ..read more
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Poetry Project — September, 2023
Liz Garton Scanlon
by liz
6M ago
This month’s challenge was the diminishing verse or pruning poem. They’re very short, quite challenging and, to my mind, a little forced or awkward. But! Who are we to back down from a challenge? So, here’s the deal — there’s no real rule except that the end word of each line is a shorter variation on the initial end word. Start with a longer blend and take away a letter (or a sound) each time. You’ll see what I mean… Now, these poems very clearly fulfill our larger 2023 theme of transformation, just by the very nature of the pruning and diminishing. I tried to use transformation in my subject ..read more
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Poetry Project — August, 2023
Liz Garton Scanlon
by liz
7M ago
Sometimes we really like to out-do ourselves. This month, for example, we decided to do an exquisite corpse poem — a collaboration wherein each person adds a line without seeing anything more than the line immediately preceding it! It’s a throw-caution-to-the-wind kind of activity. We’ve done one before. It’s fun. Why not? THEN we thought we’d add — along with our own, brand new lines — some of Linda Mitchell’s incredible (beautiful) (whimsical) (poetic) (non-clunky) clunkers from the past few years! Why not? And THEN we got together over zoom, shared the complete draft, and gave each other pe ..read more
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Poetry Project — July, 2023
Liz Garton Scanlon
by liz
8M ago
This month’s prompt was to write a monotetra — a form made up of rhymed and metrical quatrains, and closing with a line of two identical phrases. (I cheated on that last part slightly. I love formal constraints and I also love cheating. Sorry.) Also, our overarching theme this year is TRANSFORMATION and I made the additional promise to look at a particular scientific process each time! Oy. Anyway, I spent a month in the midwest this summer, with family, at a lakey, cottagey place I’ve gone to since I was a child. A lakey, cottagey place my dad’s gone to since he was a child. This poem came fro ..read more
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Poetry Project — June, 2023
Liz Garton Scanlon
by liz
9M ago
The end of June snuck up on me but I was able to quick find my way into an etheree based on a quote. (That was this month’s agreed-upon prompt — to write from a quote.) Mine’s from Sarah Polley, whose book Run Towards the Danger I absolutely adored and highly recommend. Here goes: “I hate stories in which people can’t get to where they’re going.” – Sarah Polley Seeds planted should take root, guns must go off, and each rabbit hole best lead to a warren of reason, not red herrings. Folks should get to where they’re going. No matter the story, it should lead to some certain kind of satisfaction ..read more
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Poetry Project — May, 2023
Liz Garton Scanlon
by liz
11M ago
As a reminder, this year’s theme is transformation. Narrowing that down, I’ve been focused on particular scientific processes. And this month, the prompt is to write a ghazal — a traditional Persian form made up of couplets and both end rhyme and internal rhyme that ends up feeling, to me at least, fussy. But who am I to argue? Here goes… ORBIT/orbit/verb A Ghazal Liz Garton Scanlon Oh, it’s you again, is it? Arising all bright full? All beamy and pulsey, magnetic, exciteful? You swing back around with the seas at your feet, reflecting my gaze the whole heavy night full. But it’s just a phase ..read more
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