It's the Final Blog Post!! (to the tune of final countdown)

This final blog post feels so releasing, but it's also so sad at the same time. I'm proud that I managed to update my blog somewhat consistently and keep on top of it, but it's nice to know I have one less thing to manage now. I will, however, be putting some thought into keeping this blog or a different blog going. I really enjoyed this experience and would like to continue with something like it. Since we have a baby on the way and no family in the area, it might be nice to keep a blog on the status of my pregnancy and then once the baby arrives, share my trials and tribulations as a first-time mom. I'm sure it would bring about a few laughs and, at the same time, keep my friends and family in the know.

I'd like to thank everyone in the class for taking the time to read my musings and comment whenever you saw fit. It's encouraging to see comments popping up after I publish a post, so thanks for spurring me on!

I wish you all the best in your future endeavours and hope you continue to find time to write and share your thoughts with others.

All the best!!

Lindsey

Easter Weekend Camping & Sneaky Poetry

So every Easter, if we're in town, we go camping out at Cooke Creek. It's usually hella cold, but always entertaining and a lot of fun. While I was holding back my best bud's hair as she was on all fours returning some wine back to the Earth, I pondered on how to introduce her to a little poetry. Then I thought, how could I get everyone we'd gone camping with a little more excited about poetry. The friends I camp with aren't super interested in reading poetry, or reading books for that matter, but they do like to play cards, drink, hike, fish, and BBQ steaks. And then it dawned on me -- I had brought Cards Against Humanity to our little soiree in the sticks and figured that would be a great way to introduce just a smidge of poetry into these poetry-less lives. The card game comes with blank cards where you can jot down your own funny verses, definitions, words, etc. After putting my ill-fated friend to bed, I pulled out my Cards Against Humanity game, jotted down a few sentences of poetry on each blank card, reshuffled them into the deck and waited for my next opportunity to play cards with my buddies. Turns out I didn't have to wait too long. The next afternoon, a couple of us sat around the picnic table ready to play some games. Just as I was about to suggest my doctored set of cards, someone else arrived with their own Cards Against Humanity set and we ended up playing with theirs. So poop. No slickly introduced poetry this weekend, but at least it's all cued up for the next time I find a group of friends eager to take in some giggles with a side of sneaky poetry.

Hoppy Easter, everyone :)  (See what I did there?)

National Poetry Month!

Did you know April is National Poetry Month? Neither did I! But it is.

I found this nifty article that I really enjoyed and thought I'd share. http://www.dailypress.com/entertainment/books/dp-fea-writers-block-0324-20150323-story.html. It offers up some tips and tricks for celebrating National Poetry Month and is supposed to be updated regularly.

I also found this little pearl: http://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/30-ways-celebrate-national-poetry-month.

30 ways to celebrate?! Seems excessive, but I'm definitely willing to pick a couple ways and try them out.

Celebration #1: Sign up for poem-a-day. That's right - I'll be getting one poem a day straight to my inbox.

Ooh another idea on this list that's top notch: Write an Exquisite Corpse poem with some friends. I don't really have any poetry-inclined friends who'd be willing to play along, but I'll try! Maybe we could do another Exquisite Corpse poem in class to celebrate.

Alright, we'll I've done one thing and it's not even technically April yet. I think I'm doing pretty good.

My goal is to do at least half the items on this list before the end of April. Wish me luck!

I really want a beer

So today I'm exactly six months along. Yay! Only four more months to go until I can drink a beer again! I never realized how much I liked the taste of beer until I couldn't have it. It's like the forbidden fruit! My doctor did say it would be okay to have a glass of wine every now and then, and I assume that would apply to a beer, but I think all the fear-mongering literature I received in high school and read on the back of bathroom stall doors about fetal alcohol syndrome is preventing me from cracking that much desired can. It's okay.. I wrote some poems to keep me busy and push the cravings away.

Here's my latest draft (surprise! it's about babies!!):

Holding your breath

Your baby, a fetus wrapped

in the translucent amniotic sac

much like the swaddling cloth

pin-striped or dotted, either will do

gifted by your mother in law

around eight weeks but still too soon

tiny, curled fingers plunge

into your stretching rib bone,

probe, pull, pinch and pluck

her flimsy foot flings out

at impossible obtuse angles

testing and prodding

exploring every curve you hide

under billowy blue blouses you

swore you’d never wear

even though you cry out

or reach for the crumpled

heating pad attached to the wall

a smile still etches your face

an umbilical cord tangles

firmly attached to its lifeline 


If you have an feedback, I'd love to hear it. I've still got some tinkering to do, but I think the skeleton of this poem is pretty solid. 

Blert! What the heck did I just read?!

I recently read Blert by Jordan Scott. I have to say my first impression was one of confusion and a general feeling of "meh." I painfully flipped through each page, trying my best to keep an open mind and to try and understand what this poetry was working so hard to describe. I got lost in the overuse of random words and exaggerated sentences. It wasn't until we discussed the book in class that I truly developed an appreciation for this collection. I was never blessed with a speech impediment that helped produce such an impactful collection, so I feel lucky to be able to read, and now understand, what's been put in front of me. Upon a second reading, this time with an understanding that this book was intentionally made difficult to follow which mirrors the difficulty the author finds in speaking, I was much more attracted to the contents of the book. While doing a little more research into this text, I stumbled upon a review in Lemon Hound. Here's the link: http://lemonhound.blogspot.ca/2008/08/derek-beaulieu-on-blert.html
I think Derek Beaulieu does a great job exploring and explaining his feelings on the text, and I felt like I more or less agreed with him. I found a lot of truth in Derek's explanation of the collection as a whole: 

"blert moves from language’s shorelines to the pounding surf, from the languid sandbars to the towering cliff-edges – the unstable sides of falling rocks and jagged precipices."  

I thought this was a really interesting way of explaining the book, and I thought it was really, really well said.  

A-Musing Poetry Draft

Sooo.. I decided to step away from the realism poems I tend to gravitate towards, especially about every day mundane things. This time, I wanted to write a poem about love, but I didn't want it to OBVIOUSLY be about love. Love itself feels so cliched in writing nowadays.

Here's a first draft of my attempt. Let me know your thoughts; feedback's so helpful!

The anatomy of lust

It starts in your toes

pink, jagged, curled at the knuckle

the weight of your thoughts

force them deeper into earth

your pale and supple chin

points to the ground as

your fingers thread your hair

elbow anchors take root

wind tickles your lips

dries out your teeth while

sentences snag on molars

words crumble to dust

your belly slithers upwards

suffocates your blood-soaked heart

slips up your narrow esophagus

rests in your throat

lungs begin to shrink

tongue starts to dance

matching rhythm to your hips

Vertigo Voices - Gillian Wigmore

Last week, we had our class at Vertigo Voices and were treated to a reading by Gilliam Wigmore. I just want to say how much I enjoyed her reading. She was funny, articulate, and her writing was interesting enough to keep me engaged. I was actually a little sad when she was done reading. I will be borrowing a copy of her book Grayling from a friend once classes are over because I enjoyed her reading of it so much. With the crunch of term projects, I don't think I could squeeze in some un-assigned reading.

Although, Gillian didn't read "Bather at a Spring," I really wanted to share it and discuss it a little bit.

The imagery in this poem is impressive. It actually took me back to my childhood. LOL. I know that's weird, but my grandparents had a cabin at Trout Lake (near Nakusp). We'd take a ferry out there from Revelstoke and spend a couple weeks staying with my grandparents. My dad would take my brother and I to local hot springs in the area, and sometimes it was so secluded and empty but other times there would be a handful of naked bathers. For some reason, this poem stuck me right back into that natural hot springs, and I really enjoyed that quality.   

Disclosure - Dana Teen Lomax

I have to admit -- there's a nakedness and a vulnerability about this book that really intrigued me. At first glance, I thought this book was a collection of accumulated documents belonging to the author. And it is. But if you sift through the scattering of details, there's something so raw about the information contained within them. Bills, debt, earnings, etc -- all of these topics are somewhat socially taboo. I was raised that it's impolite to ask someone how much they earn, how big their debt load is, what their medical records look like, etc. In fact, at my place of employment, it's unacceptable to ask another employee in a comparable position how much they earn. Not only do you run the risk of offending the person you ask, you could even have disciplinary action taken against you. So to have someone openly publish their income statements and do it in such a nonchalant way, it completely blew my mind. It's one thing to talk about these things among close friends and family, but to show the world? That takes balls, in my opinion.
Writing can be an incredibly personal experience for some people, but you can still hide behind the narrator when your piece is shared. There is absolutely nothing to hide behind when you show someone personal documents. It has your name, it has your information, and it has a harsh reality to it. As weird as I found this form of poetry, I admire it. It's not easy putting yourself out there for everyone to see and judge.

Disclosing a Little Info

Currently, I've only flipped through a few pages of Disclosure, but it did give me an idea for a poetry draft. Since Disclosure seems focused on documentation, I thought it would be neat to do a poem based on the questions asked on applications for certain documents like a passport app. It's a bit of a combination between 2500 Random Things and Disclosure. I'm not sure if it works, but it was still kind of fun to write. 

Passport Pass Through

SURNAME: That sounds masculine. If I were French, would that be the masculine spelling of my last name?

GIVEN NAME(S): It'd be neat if we got to pick our own names at birth. I'd probably be writing "Miss Princess" here if that were the case. 

SURNAME AT BIRTH: I wonder how many babies take their mother's last name at birth? I read somewhere that you can name a baby whatever you want -- it doesn't have to have the same last name as either parent. Hello, Miss Princess Oftheworld!

FORMER SURNAME: What if you've been married like three times? I don't think there's enough spaces for three different last names. 

DATE OF BIRTH: The 6th. 

PLACE OF BIRTH: The hospital.

SEX: Is it cliched to say "yes, please"?

EYE COLOUR: Green -- no, wait. I think it's hazel. Yellow?

CURRENT HAIR COLOUR: Does anyone truly have natural, un-dyed hair anymore? 

HEIGHT: Tall for a girl.

WEIGHT: Size 8. That's all you need to know.

I'm not sure how to finish it, so any suggestions are welcome!

Ariel Gordon's How-to Poetry

After our last class I felt particularly drawn to Ariel Gordon's work after Kevin pointed out that my poem "Life Hack #1" was reminiscent of her work. I also compiled and designed an anthology in class last year entitled "How to Poet," so I feel like my path was meant to cross over hers.

I found this article of hers insanely inspiring: http://49thshelf.com/Blog/2014/07/31/Behind-the-Poem-Ariel-Gordon-and-the-How-To-Poems

And this poem in the article really caught my attention, so much so that I may consider attempting another Life Hack poem. I've been googling "life hacks" for inspiration. That plus the following poem are definitely nudging me in the right direction.

How to Write a Poem

—Ariel Gordon 

Write about what terrifies you but, um, wait until mum or dad is dead to do it. For the family’s sake...

Take all the punctuation out of your poem

Your lover should be your first reader & your subject, but know this: having good sex is hard. Writing good sex is harder. Believing someone who just had their head between your legs—even if they’re a hardcore critic—impossible.

No one needs your next poem.

(Everyone needs your next goddamn poem.)

If writing rhyming poetry about God from jail, realize you’ve hit the trifecta. Celebrate by centering everything on the hard drive that’s not porn.

capital letters are for suckers. seersuckers. sapsuckers.

Also, use the page. Engage the ear. Allude to classical texts, sneak in a few impeccable pop culture references. Break the line. Break a leg.

Have a firm grasp of grammar & syntax but also have something on the side with the fragment. Form should follow content but, hopefully, not breathing heavily.

Put the punctuation back in.


Don’t write poems about writing poems.


What I particularly like about this poem is the randomness of it. The line "No on needs your next poem" made me laugh out loud. Sometimes, as a writer, I feel the urge to turn a good poem into a collection, but sometimes it falls flat and the work that follows it never lives up to my expectations, just like most movie sequels. Although that line seems ridiculous, I found some truth in it. The second line worth admiring is the final line. It's cheeky and cute and the perfect way to wrap up this poem.

Blue Skies vs Grey Fog

So, in response to a couple of questions about why I hate fog so much, I decided to write about it. I thought I could capture more of the emotion, but I feel like this first draft fell a little flat. I tried to bring a poetic meaning to my loathing of fog, but it kind of went in another direction. I'm going to play with this idea a little more, but in the meantime, here's my initial rough draft:

The Grey

Sometimes, an all too real
fogginess full of ponderings,
lack lustre memories, daydreams
of old habits and past friends
creep into the corners
of your unfocused mind
hovering somewhere between
yesterday and tomorrow, cold
and permanent, dull, leaking
life that once cracked your bones
and rattled your insides, held
your hand and carried you away

P.S. The real reason I hate fog is it acts like an unwanted hat on a sunny day. It'll be absolutely beautiful here at home, blue skies, melting snow, birds chirping, and then I head down Silver Star Rd into town and drive into a cloud of misery blanketing the town and blocking out any signs of happiness.

Rant over.

Google: Lindsey

So, last class Kevin challenged us to Google something (our names, for example) and then write a poem based on the images that turn up. I chose to Google my name, and wasn't entirely surprised by what I found. I was a little surprised at the lack of images of Lindsay Lohan, but I'm really glad about it too.

The majority of the pictures were blondes sitting around posing in bikinis. Don't they have anything better to do? I even found a couple of them sporting the dreaded "fish lip" look. Eww. There was one image that helped save my slightly shattered ego though: a Lindsey playing a violin! Hurray! Not all Lindsey's on Google appear to be flakey, bimbo bitches!

Here's the first draft of my Google image search results:

Google: Lindsey

Girl smiles with confidence

Girl hides behind thick lashes and black eyeliner

Blonde hair dominates society

Girl presses naked boobs to surfboard

Girl with pearl earrings grins

Girl with violin violently smirks

Skimpy bikini tops trump sweaters

Girl pouts, faking fat fish lips

While gripping a large microphone

Girls in red, girls in white

Big hoop earrings, gold and silver

Surprise! One man joins the crowd

Let me know your thoughts. I'm not too happy with how it turned out, but I think with some tweaking and adding and subtracting, this poem could be really interesting. I was also playing with the idea of moving it into a prose poem instead of a list poem.

2500 Random Things Review

The book 2500 Random Things About Me Too by Matias Viegener is such an interesting compilation. It's striking to me that this book simply originated on Facebook and then compiled to create an entire collection of poetry. It's such a neat idea, and in the age of flarf and other nouveau poetry movements, using Facebook to put together such a unique book isn't really all that surprising. The best part about Viegener's work is the subtle glimpse into the narrator's personality we're given as readers. At times, Viegener writes lines like "I bite my nails," but in other lines, he goes on to provide us with a memory or an event that took place in his past. Not only does he tell us about his personality and some of his characteristics, he also gives us something to think about and interpret in our own way. For example, the line: "I remember when I was a kid and the local teen pervert, who was maybe four years older than the rest of us, would lurk in a parking lot waiting to catch us," offers up a little insight into the narrator's thought process. Perhaps he felt paranoid or maybe he secretly hoped the teen pervert would catch him.

Overall, I found 2500 Random Things About Me Too a fun read. It almost felt like I was face creeping the narrator, reading his personal status updates, and even though the book contained no pictures, some of the imagery was vivid enough to create a picture in my mind's eye.  

For another thought-provoking review, check out Jacob Wren's review of the book on Lemon Hound.

25 Random Things About Me Too

I've been reading 2500 Random Things About Me Too by Matias Viegener, and thought it would be really neat to do something similar but on a smaller scale. It's a rough draft, but I like how it turned out. I'm totally open to feedback, so if there's something in this list that doesn't work, please let me know!

25 Random Things About Me You Probably Didn’t Know

1.  When I was a toddler, my brother and I were picked up for breaking and entering. We snuck into our neighbour’s trailer and ate cookies from their cookie jar.

2. I have two dogs and a cat. I used to have two cats but one was killed by coyotes on Christmas day 2013.

3. My middle name is Marlene, which is the same middle name as my grandma.

4. I feel like there’s a little alien in my uterus.

5. I had a childhood best friend until I moved to a new city at the end of Grade 7. We lost contact until I moved back to BC three years ago. She was my maid of honour at my wedding last summer.

6. I’ve been engaged twice, but only married once.

7. My favourite colour was purple as a little girl. Everything had to be purple.

8. My wedding colours were orange and blue.

9. Sometimes I think about how every place I’ve lived in has contributed to my personality, my likes, my dislikes, and the characteristics that make me who I am. Then I think it’s probably not the places I’ve been, but the people I’ve met.

10. I really dislike snow and cold weather, but not as much as I hate fog. It makes me really angry.

11. I like to renovate my house.

12. For my husband’s birthday, I renovated the garage. I even painted a large KTM logo on one of the walls.

13. We own three KTM dirt bikes.

14. Dirt biking terrifies me. I love it, but I get so nervous each time I gear up. My heart pounds louder than my two-stroke engine.

15. One time we were out dirt biking and I caught a branch in the neck. My first reaction was to drop my ear to my shoulder, which made me pinch the branch with my neck and cause a huge burn to my neck. Once it scabbed over, it looked like a giant hickey.

16. My grandpa nicknamed me Sweetpea on the day I was born. He still calls me that.

17. I honestly believe that if you think positively, good things will happen to you.

18. I have two brothers, a younger one and an older one.

19. My older brother was given up for adoption by my parents. My mom was 16 and couldn’t care for him. We met him six years ago, and now we’re all really close.

20. Not all endings are happy.

21. My prenatal vitamins make me really sick if I don’t take them with food.

22. My husband is a volunteer firefighter, and I’m so proud of him.

23. I used to have to wear snowsuits under my Halloween costumes when I was little. I looked like a fat princess.

24. My first car was a red ‘86 Ford Taurus. I filled the tank with kerosene once, and my dad cursed the entire time it took him to flush the fuel lines.

25. I’m so proud of the life my husband and I have built, and I can’t wait to bring our baby into it.

Writing Prompts

I've always found writing prompts to be insanely helpful to get my creative words out of my head; however, I sometimes have to go through A LOT of prompts. In fact, I'm signed up to Sarah Selecky's daily prompt email list. They usually hit my inbox around 3 am, cause my phone to vibrate, and either wake up myself or my husband. I've been a subscriber for about two years now, and I still haven't addressed the issue of the emails waking us up. Oops.

I thought I'd share a couple of my favourite recent prompts. They're mostly geared towards prose, but I've found them helpful in generating a poem or two.

Doody Draft

So... this weekend I stumbled across the perfect theme for testing out my flarfing abilities. We have a Roomba that miraculously vacuums up all the pet hair in our house before I get home from school and work. With two dogs and a cat, it's been a hero to my allergies. However, did you know it will push its way through some interesting piles? Enter dog poop. 

We have a puppy who is still learning that the house is a doo-doo free zone. As cute as she is, she can be a real pain in my house-cleaning backside.

So, while I scrubbed the floors (a lot of floors -- that Roomba really gives 'er) and my husband dismantled dear Roomba for the cleaning of it's life, I laughed out loud and realized I could probably write an entertaining flarf poem about this situation. 

Here's my doggy accident-inspired flarf poem (with about 90 percent of the lines taken right from Google):   

The doody of a pet owner

My Roomba tries to clean up dog poop
It does a crappy job
Solutions to the dog poop problem
from free wireless to a surprise package
The Dogs Trust says fouling is on the rise for the first time in ten years
It's one of the scourges of urban Britain.
Did you know it is an offence if you do not clean up your dog's mess? 
There are approximately 30,000 dogs in Tameside. 
Each day they produce nearly 12 tonnes of dog mess.
Unsightly, smelly, a breeding medium for germs and disease, and a huge hassle on the sole of a shoe, dog poop is not desirable
Curbing is the polite term for a canine waste disposal method 
Millions of dog owners collect their dog poo in small plastic bags
not scented -- try the green disposable kind!