30 #verselove2019

Congratulations! We have shared this virtual space for 30 days — 30 days of words, phrases, images, and lines borrowed from lives lived and imagined.

Inspiration

Patched poems borrow lines from our community of poems to create something new while honoring the lines that have stirred our hearts and minds this month.

Today, we’d like to encourage you to select a day from our 30 days on ethicalela.com and reread the poems looking for lines you can borrow/celebrate to make a new poem, a poem that honors and celebrates other poets who’ve shared their lives with us this past month. After your poem (or after each line) indicate the poets/poems you’ve borrowed as a thank you to the poets who inspired your verse.

Process

• Pick a day and select lines form several poems to make something new — a found poem. For example, if you enjoyed the pantoum day, go back to poem sixteen and find lines from a few poems to make your own. You can blend some of their lines with yours.
• Choose a poem from #verselove2019 that you loved or found intriguing and try to answer someone else’s poem with a poem of your own.
• Choose a line from a #verselove2019 poet that you especially appreciated. You might pull out one of their lines to make your own.
• Respond to someone’s poem with a new point of view. For example, I wrote a poem on day twenty-eight about our magnolia tree; you might write a similar poem in response from the magnolia’s point of view or perhaps the tree from your poem wants to speak to mine.
• Or, return to our list poem inspiration from day 3, and write a list of what you know to be true about writing poetry!

Sarah’s Poem

*I will add my Patched Poem later today, but here is my thank you note for being with us this month.

“Gratitude”

I am sitting in my big, comfy chair with my coffee
as I have at this time for the last thirty days, and
I am thinking about all the different ways
we have poem-ed together.
I hear you. I feel you. I thank you.

And there are other hearts out there who may have not shared
but who have, nonetheless, heard you express and feel blessed
to have read your verse and the rest.

I am just so thankful to you all
for sharing this virtual – no actual- space,
for being vulnerable, honorable, adorable, and invincible,
for your beautiful words on the page, some we just could not say in our days,
and for witnessing lives lived in this-
way.

I love that we are all equals in this space — not the same (thank goodness),
but here — there is no shame -ing or blame-ing.
There are no grades made, no cutting blades of apprais-al.
There are no requirements or performance.
This has been a place to express, collect, reflect, and even experiment.
If you are new to verse, you have likely discovered,
uncovered poetry’s gift of therapy —
its power to assuage souls, stir inspiration, and bring joy.
When you share your poem with us, it goes from yours to ours, and,
well, thank you.

Thank you for being with us this month as a reader, as a poet, as a poetry lover! Here is an overview with links to every day’s inspiration and poems. We invite you to look back at the way our poem-ing has invited inquiry into fissures of our lives, nurturing empathy and respect for all who have visited this virtual space. We would love to hear about your experience and gather suggestions for next year. Please take this survey.