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 8 Prompt
And last but not least, our (optional) prompt. I call this one “Return to Spoon River,” after Edgar Lee Masters’ eminently creepy 1915 book Spoon River Anthology. The book consists of well over 100 poetic monologues, each spoken by a person buried in the cemetery of the fictional town of Spoon River, Illinois.
Today, I’d like to challenge you to read a few of the poems from Spoon River Anthology, and then write your own poem in the form of a monologue delivered by someone who is dead. Not a famous person, necessarily – perhaps a remembered acquaintance from your childhood, like the gentleman who ran the shoeshine stand, or one of your grandmother’s bingo buddies. As with Masters’ poems, the monologue doesn’t have to be a recounting of the person’s whole life, but could be a fictional remembering of some important moment, or statement of purpose or philosophy. Be as dramatic as you like – Masters’ certainly didn’t shy away from high emotion in writing his poems.
Day 8 Poem
Sans Detour
We show clearly and strongly how we feel
Sitting in this ship
Amongst the others
Praying for an adventure
Far from the known
Into the arms of Quebec
The days are long
And my minds drifts
As we make our way
Dreams about what is to come
And stories from the crew
Who have made this voyage
Fill me with hope
I scribble in my diary daily
But most days have little to reveal
To my progeny
And I oft times wonder if
They would even view my scratching
My dreams show a multitude
Who look similar to me and my ancestors
Yet they don’t know my name
They don’t know of Louis
The beloved son of Julien and Jeanne
The artist and scribe of the family
Searching the world for more
Adventures to add to the family tale
Our immortality, I fear, dies with me
Hence I left my family
To carry on the name in the new world
The tears of my mother
And the fear
Just under the surface
Of my Papa’s face
Are the last memories
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.
- Email: timothy@createartpodcast.com
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