POETRY FOR 30 DAYS IN APRIL DAY 11

Project Details

Hello friend, I am Timothy Kimo Brien, head instigator at Create Art Podcast where we help you to tame the inner critic and create more than we consume. Every year in April National Poetry Writing Month occurs, this is a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days and comes from the NaPoWriMo site. When you participate you are given a prompt every day for 30 days and you can choose to follow the prompt or not. Each prompt has a commentary with it and a style of poetry that you may not be familiar with. I enjoy it because it stretches my creative muscles and helps me organize my thoughts. I also really enjoy a good challenge. There is also an opportunity to read other people’s work as they post on their websites and for you to comment on their work, giving them encouragement or offering a suggestion. Care to join me on this journey?

Day 11 Prompt

This is a twist on a prompt offered by Kay Gabriel during a meeting she facilitated at the Poetry Project last year. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a two-part poem, in the form of an exchange of letters. The first stanza (or part) should be in the form of a letter that you write either to yourself or to a famous fictional or historical person. The second part should be the letter you receive in response. These can be as short or long as you like, in the form of prose poems, or with line breaks – and of course, the subject matter of the letters is totally up to you.

Happy writing!

Day 11 Poem

To Ken and Joe

1

When I heard your voices

On Sunday nights in Chicago

Laying alone in my bed

Waiting for Monday morning

And the start of the drudgery

Before I would drift off to the dreams

You constructed

In the two hours

My attention was never more focused

On the little things you would add

A thought here, a discarded phrase there

What most people who did listen in would miss

Was the crumbs that I feasted upon

I wanted to recreate what you had done

But soon I found that

I was failing to sound like you

And I am glad for that failure

Because I sound like me

Inspired by you

To tell the world how I see them

You both have passed on

Just when this party down here was getting good

So now we are left to tell our stories

Without your voice

And twisted reality

2

Tim

Your voice is enough

Your vision is enough

It is souls like you

That keep us from feeling the isolation

From the creeping madness that chants

No one will understand,

Everyone will think you untalented

You are truly insane talking to yourself

We are glad you are finding your voice

As we have found ours

Since we are missing the party below

Write your open letter to us

Save the really juicy stuff

For no one else alive to hear

And save it for those who truly understand

Those yet to be born and those freshly deceased

PS can we send this to our good friends John and Leonard

We have been playing euchre with them

And are waiting for Tom to come

So we can figure out who reads

Your lines better

Reaching Out

To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and lets start that conversation.

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