Read the full prompt here.
Happy half-way point of Na/GloPoWriMo 2022!
Our featured participant for the day is Voyages des Mots.
Today’s featured online journal is Atticus Review, which has been publishing online since 2011. Among their recently published poems, I’ll point you to Meghan Sterling’s “A,” and Martha Silano’s “If We Were Not So Single Minded.”
Today I’d like to challenge you to write a poem about something you have absolutely no interest in. This isn’t quite the same, I think, as something you’re indifferent to… this prompt has value precisely because it invites you to investigate some of the “why” behind resolutely not giving two hoots about something.
Today marks the beginning of the Easter weekend and we’ve been busy working on the house, possibly the only people who stayed in today – after a week of rainy/April weather we have 20ºC/sunshine. Still, we have an organised bathroom and lounge now! And I’m all set for my reading tomorrow. I come to NaPo late today, but I did read the page and features this morning with a coffee.
I started with the featured poem The Quay. Highly emotive.
Silence like the pause after an Amen This is where the story really begins
Next read the poems in Atticus Review. A by Meghan Sterling a beautiful poem exploring a moment between mother and daughter, of course it turns.
I want to hold her
longer than she wants to be held.
her fingers
gentle as new grass.
the air sighing around the furniture.
Then I read If We Were Not So Single Minded by Martha Silano. I enjoyed the mystery of this piece, read it several times and still felt caught by it. I understand the concept and theories being pulled into question/focus and for me it’s not a negative thing to feel you fully understand a poem. I like it when I come across poetry I don’t fully understand, when I have to decipher my own reading and retrace. I pondered on the philosophical questions/queries and was carried along by the words. Now I read it and see all those gleaming answers.
How they make it look easy: the slow traffic of cormorants.
The lounging calm of a lion like abandoned property.
What’s hidden is where the music goes once it escapes
its strings,
PROCESS NOTES
I thought long & hard about what I don’t like to do/have no interest in – not yet thinking of the why. I started by searching hobby videos hoping to find inspiration, but after a day of sorting fell down a decluttering video rabbit hole!
So I went back to just pondering and the one thing (I knew it would be physical activity/sport) was fishing. I have known people who fish, I have seen the tackle boxes in garages, I spent years living on the riverbank and watching the men fish, I have seen hand fishing and spear fishing. I have watched documentaries on the industry with the focus on trawlers and fishermen… and of course I saw Seaspiracy last year, but I’ve never understood fishing as a recreational hobby (other than the silence and peace).
Theme, done – poem to come!
I set about doing simple research on terms and some of the context/background of the hobby before setting down to write, after reading a page I threw the notes to one side and wrote. I am not sure I managed to keep hold of the why.
From Bait/Hook/Lure.
Old fish bones and cave paintings, / the need for hunters to gather,
and it flashes forward to my modern experience of fishing (not the actual act) and finishes back in my imagination. It is bare bones at the moment – it may be an interesting area to work on though. We will see.
awritersfountain 