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!