Collaboration Inspiration

Collaboration Inspiration with Gae Polisner and Lori Landau

Welcome to Day 3 of Verselove. We are so happy you are here, however you choose to be present. If you know what to do, carry on; if you are not sure, begin by reading the inspiration and mentor poem, then scroll to the comment section to post your poem. Please respond to at least three other poets in celebration of words, phrases, ideas, and craft that speak to you. All educators – authors, librarians, teachers, teacher educators, coaches, consultants, preservice, retired–are welcome. It’s free. No commitment is needed. Please invite a teacher-friend to join you one or more days because poetry heals. Click here for more information on the Verselove. Click here for the PD tracker if you’d like PD credits.

Gae is the author of soon-to-be-seven novels including the forthcoming CONSIDER THE OCTOPUS, an environmental farce, and the multi-award winning THE MEMORY OF THINGS used in schools around the country. A family law attorney/mediator by trade, but a writer by calling, Gae lives on Long Island with her husband, two sons, and a suspiciously-fictional-looking small dog she swore she’d never own. She is an avid swimmer and, when not writing, can be found in the open waters of the Long Island Sound. You may follow her on twitter and Instagram @gaepol, on facebook at gaepolisnerauthor, and find her books wherever books are sold.

Lori Landau is an interdisciplinary, decolonizing artist whose poetic work draws on her long-time meditation and compassion practices, and a deep love for nature. Her art and writing explore themes of relationship and human rights, and fuel the writing workshops she runs which invite participants to access their own unique interdependent connection to inner and outer landscapes. She has been published in numerous magazines and blogs and is currently working on a book of poems that honor grief as a sacred process of self-realization. She holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College, with a concentration in Decolonial Arts Praxis. You may reach Lori at lori.landau@goddard.edu 

Inspiration

Right after the 2016 election, my creativity deflated. Dried up. Disappeared. I thought, hey, it’s okay, it’ll come back when things calm down. Then came a pandemic. As always, if we wait for the perfect time, it rarely comes. Yet, there I was, feeling, for the first time in a decade, creatively stuck.

Early on, I asked a friend if she might want to collaborate on a novel. I wasn’t managing to write on my own, but what if we could inspire one another, and hold one another to producing actual words… and *gasp* even meet a daily deadline? Between 2016 – 2021, she and I co-wrote three manuscripts together, proving to me what a rich source of inspiration collaboration can be! Somewhere in that time period, on a ride home from my friend Lori Landau’s house – I hadn’t seen her in a long time, and we had had a surprisingly connective and restorative time together –  I wrote a poem and texted it to her. It moved her deeply. “Write one back to me,” I said, a natural reaction, honestly, as we had written poetry together in our late teens into our twenties. “Lift a line or theme from mine to inspire yours. . . ” That evening I got one back from her, and dove immediately back into another. From there, we started a poetry “trade” that continues to this day. I lift inspiration from a line, theme, or feeling from her poem, and she, in turn, sources a line, idea or emotion from mine, and so on. We have collectively written over one hundred pages of poetry this way.

Process

We started a Google Doc sporting the clever title of Gae Lori Poetry Trade. There are weeks when we write nonstop, and weeks when we’re waiting on the other. The text, “You’ve been poemed” popping up on one of our phones, is always a happy one. When you read the two poems below, one after the other, you will quickly spot the point of inspiration.

One thing I’d like to add: the point is not for these poems to be perfect. Often they remain unedited raw shares, simply serving to inspire each of us to WRITE.

So, perhaps today we can be in a group poetry trade, using lines or themes from the poems right here in the comments as jumping off points… lifting a few words, a theme, or a single line.  

Someone will have to be first, of course, so please lift from the below poems shared from our 2022 trade.

Enjoy!

Gae’s Poem

Renovation (by Gae)

They are gutting
our bathroom,
hauling out the tub
Where I bathed you both
for years,
watched with eagle eyes so you
might not
slip under,
made white foam mohawks
in your hair,
moved orange toy dinosaur across ledge
growling,
“rawr, rawr, rawr,”
soaked my sleeves to my
elbows.

They are gutting our bathroom,
trashing the sink where
I taught you to brush and floss,
running waxed string through
your teeth
like
time,
ripping up the floor
to put new Italian tile down,
white squares with black swirls that
I only just noticed
look like
fallopian tubes.

They are gutting our bathroom,
hauling out the pieces
through your open
bedroom window
for ease,
tearing down walls,
yanking toilets,
closing up the leaky skylight,
the whole house trembling with
destruction.

There goes the tub,
the toilet,
the sink

(You were already gone).

Gae Polisner 1/12/22

Lori’s Poem

There goes
there gone
there
as in not here
as if there could be
anywhere else
than not here.

I am still trying to find you.

Those last lost days
you ruined eternity for me
declaring
“gone is gone.”

though you’d promised–
to make your presence known
-in the sway of chandeliers
-blooming chrysanthemum
-cardinal flying
to appear like
Jesus in a slice of bread

once I thought you were
Omnipotent

forgetting all gods
are invisible

Can you see me here
praying to the Amaryllis,
the sunrise,
Holey crater
In my morning toast?

Lori Landau 1/12/22

Your Turn

Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own poem. (This is a public space, so you may use only your first name or initials depending on your privacy preferences.) Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. . Oh, and a note about drafting: Since we are writing in short bursts, we all understand (and even welcome) the typos and partial poems that remind us we are human and that writing is always becoming.

Respond to 3

Respond to 3 teachers today. Writing educator Peter Elbow said, “To improve your writing you don’t need advice about what changes to make; you don’t need theories of what is good and bad writing. You need movies of people’s minds while they read your words” (Writing Without Teachers, 1973, p. 77). Please offer a mirror to our writers by sharing what you noticed, what moved you, and what you learned. Responding to one another is a way of saying “I see you” and “thank you for writing” and “I carry your words.” Responses create a much needed space of reciprocity in a teacher’s life. Here are a few sentence stems that may be helpful for you and your students.