I've remained vigilant on my month-watch and it's definitely still April, and in America that means
You will have a change to write poetry even if you've never done it before—the writing prompts aim to demystify the process of writing a poem. This will not take the place of the 2020 Writing Exercise Series, but will be in addition to it, so there will be a bevy of poetry to bathe your mind with.
So. Let's begin.
April 7, 2020
National Poetry Month 2020 Activity Pack Day 7
1) Before we dive explicitly into poetry, I really enjoyed this TED talk about unlocking your creativity via what teachers call 'scaffolding' experiences—generating a series of small accomplishments to build upon—and the speaker David Kelley, uses multiple narratives to explain how he teaches how to de-mystify the creative process. I use a similar process in many of my writing exercises—writing a poem from a blank page can seem incredibly daunting, but if you have to write a series of very specific sentences based on criteria out of your control (requirements/constraints) for instance, you no longer have a blank page to start from. But enough patter, onto the video!
2) The Paris Review is doing a series for National Poetry Month called Poets on Couches—which reminds me of parties during grad school. [insert rim shot] But in this instance, each video is a poet reading a poem that was originally published in The Paris Review. I knew I'd be highlighting it when I saw Kay Ryan's "Crash" being featured by Natalie Shapero. I love that poem, it's from Ryan's phenomenal collection Say Uncle which I've read at least a dozen times—and Shapero is explains the poem very well afterwards. Plus, with the reading and the explication the whole video is still only 5 minutes.
3) Now go read one, or preferably all of the following three 'recently' published poems:
"Recuerdo: Mexico, 1997" by Esteban Rodríguez in Gordon Square Review Issue 5.
"The Cafe" by John Drudge in Black Coffee Review Spring 2020.
"The Last Train" by Finola McDonald in Flock Issue 22.
4) Go read all of the following three short poems that were published more than two years ago—you'll detect a strain of surrealism that is not by accident:
4) In the following video Kay Ryan talks briefly about why she writes poetry, her affinity for rhyme, and the joy of winning her MacArthur Fellowship (the video is from 2012)
In this video from the Poetry Everywhere series we get a little biographical information on Ryan before seeing her read the poem "Turtle".
And since Ryan's poems are so short, here's another video of her reading, this time the poem Shipwreck at just over a minute long.
5) Now it's time for a poetry-based word scramble! If you're so inclined, solve the following poetry-related anagrams for words, terms and names. I will post the answers in tomorrow's Activity Pack.
(What will happen if I meet Ms. Coulter while playing World of Warcraft?)
I' L L L E V E L A N N
(What is the common perception of a 'poet'?)
P A L E, A G E D L O N E R
(Describe recycling...)
C A N S = C O I N S
(If you listen to everything you read on the internet, you...)
L E A R N M Y T H S
(Where the ultra-rich creche is located...)
T O T I S L E
6) And since we've gotten a hefty dose of rhyming, for today's trip back in time, we're going to January 11th, 2016 for this "Filler Miller" Rhymebank exercise. This exercise involves some brainstorming, writing unrelated sentences, and then assembly and filling out—taking on a similar incremental or scaffolding approach that David Kelley talked about in the first video.
