June: 3/5-Day Monthly Writing Challenge

Today’s writing inspiration comes from Susie Morice, writer and editor. She is a consultant with Santa Fe Center for Transformational School Leadership and the Institute for School Partnership at Washington University in St. Louis. Susie is also a Teacher-Consultant with The Gateway Writing Project, a former public school classroom teacher for 30 years, and a poet, who is the winner of Member-at-Large Best Poem, 2014 – Missouri State Poetry Society contest.

Inspiration

PHOTOGRAPH. An old photograph or a recent one evokes a moment captured in time. We see in a photograph a frozen moment. Were you to take that same picture 24 hours later, a year later, ten years later, a generation later, something most assuredly would be different. In that way, the photograph conveys a unique opportunity to freeze time. Today’s prompt asks you to look deeply into the frozen moment and take note of what is there and, even more interestingly in some ways, what is not there or what was missing. The evidence just outside the frame of that picture might hold a story/images all their own.

Of course, write about whatever moves you.

Process

• Pull out a scrapbook, your laptop Photo stash, a box of old photographs you’ve had stored on a shelf.  Select a few of these photographs – perhaps 4-5 – make them photos that are more than just pretty…they matter to you for whatever reason.
• Zero in on one photo.
• Show that photo to someone, and engage in a conversation about the photo.  Jabber on about what was happening at the time, who was there, why it was taken, when it was taken, who took it.  Notice as many details in the photos as you can. This discourse helps loosen up details that you might otherwise have forgotten.
• Make some assumptions about the photograph image…it doesn’t really matter if it’s true or if it’s accurate… let yourself create a moment of meaning surrounding that photograph.  Perhaps, consider what might have been just outside the frame of that photo.
• Poetry is recreating and creating – let your imagination walk through your senses – colors, sounds, comments being made, tastes and smells, the play of light across the scene…
• Begin to scribble some ideas about that frozen moment, recreate that frozen moment, bringing it to life in your poem.
• NOTE:  As much as I’d like you to post your picture, I’m not sure the website supports our pics.  But your poem will unfold the image!

Susie’s Poem

“Missouri Spring”

When it rains,
it rains
and rains
steady sheets
till the Missouri turns that milky chocolate
brown with roiling eddies that take the bottomland
and the wearied cottonwoods,
as it unbelts itself
in a long exhalation
to the Confluence and on
down to the Delta,
all the while reshaping her edges,
ignoring levees and sandbags and silly strides to girdle her dimension.
Greens redefine;
emergent hues expand the verdurous palette
with viridescence and chartreuse.
Spring–before the chiggers
claim the wooded paths,
when morels push between the soaked mat of leaves
along the creek beds
where fallen hickory limbs grow soft
in the fecund damp–
sets off another cycle of birthing.
Wood ducks with their harlequin heads
of green and blue and black
parade on creeks, a train of downy ducklings.
Sun streaks lining the nimbus
spotlight terrapins,
unstirred as flat rocks
on low-slung limbs wedged in the flotsam.
I am awash in Missouri spring.

Post your writing any time today. If the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome — any topic, any form. Please be sure to respond to at least three writers, too. Below are some suggestions for commenting with care. Oh, and a note about edits: The comment feature of this blog (and many blogs) does not permit edits. Since we are writing in short bursts, we all are understanding (and even welcome) the typos that remind us we are human.