claim to fame

I found the link to this poetry quiz in the sidebar of The Music In It : Adelle Kenny's blog.

I took the Poetry Terminology Quiz at Famous Poems.org

My results: Super Poetry Expert! My Score Average The average quiz taker scored 69%, while I scored a whopping 95%! How's that for a poetry expert?

Think you can do better? Head to the Famous Poems Library and Take the Quiz!

The inside scoop on editing an anthology

The January/February issue of Faith Today contains my review of A Second Cup of Hot Apple Cider. I was moved and blessed by this anthology of stories (true and fictional), essays, poems, and even a play, by members of The Word Guild—Canadian writers, editors, publishers and speakers who are Christian.

In my review I drew attention to the work of the editors, N.J. Lindquist and Wendy Nelles, and their success at preserving the variety of writers' voices while giving us a smooth read. And so I was interested to come across Janet Sketchley's interview of N.J. and Wendy, where they reveal the process they went through to assemble this book.

I found out, for example, that a mere 10-15% of the pieces required only minimal editing. The rest went back and forth numerous times. Some pieces were a combination of several. Others were almost completely rewritten.

To discover more about how such an anthology is assembled and edited, read all of "Interview: The Editors of A Second Cup of Hot Apple Cider"

Does your inner writer need a New Year boost?

In my blog reading over the last few days I've come across a wealth of interesting articles. Some of them might interest you too.

• Literary agent Rachelle Gardner muses on the process of making resolutions. This discovery of hers resonated with me: "Last year ... I identified that for me to be successful with my goals, I needed to first identify the underlying emotional reason for the goal." Read all of  "Goals, Resolutions, Words."

• I'm not sure I'm ready or lusting for massive blog success. But if I were (if you are), I would give "21 Quick Actions you can do today to set your blog up for massive success" a read.

• You'll find lots of common sense in "Chip MacGregor's best writing advice."

• Ilya Pozin's  "7 Things Highly Productive People Do" contains Tony Wong's common sense advice like "Be Militant about eliminating distractions" and "schedule your email" as well as anti-intuitive suggestions like "Stop multi-tasking." Read all of "7 Things Highly Productive People Do."

• Finally, if you're needing more time wasters great advice for the procrastinator writer in you, check out "The Top 10 blogs for writers - 2011 / 2012."

Tarr Award presentation to J. I. Packer

This 11-minute video features several minutes of introduction by Grace Fox followed by Dr. Packer's gracious words of acceptance of The Word Guild Tarr Award for Writing.

Dr. J. I. Packer receives The Word Guild Tarr Award for Writing

Write a Christmas Poem (16 Christmas poem prompts)

The God who speaks planets, suns and galaxies into existence becomes a fertilized egg in a woman's womb. It's what we celebrate at Christmas. How it fires our imaginations and challenges our pens! Which poet hasn't tried writing at least one Christmas poem? Some attempt to write a new one every year.

But there's a problem with that. For in spite of the Christmas story's mind-bending beginning, its cast of colorful characters, unlikely setting and gripping plot line, it's been around for 2000+ years. By now it's as familiar as a cliché. With the body of Christmas writing that has collected over the centuries, isn't there a possibility—even a likelihood—that someone will have already had our Christmas thoughts and written them? How then can we keep our writing from being second-hand? How can we write engagingly and freshly about Christmas?

As I struggled with writing this year's Christmas poem, I decided to look for ways to think about Christmas that might yield new ideas. I've come up with 16 Christmas poem prompts along with examples where I could find them. Some of these ideas I've already tried. Others have me itching to get pen onto paper!

1. Christmas Character
Focus on one character from the Christmas story. Prepare to write by rereading the Christmas story (Matthew 1 & 2; Luke 2).  Imagine your character’s back-story, home, and family. Then retell the story or arrive at some truth about Christmas from that individual’s point of view.
Jan Wood, in her poem “Chosen” talks about Mary:

Mary
handmaiden
chosen
among women
not for your wide hips
or easy stride
chosen
when so many others
would have nursed
and cuddled
deity…          (Read all of "Chosen.")

2. Magnified Christmas Moment
Choose a moment in time from the Christmas story and explore it fully.
Claudia Burney puts a magnifying glass on the moment of Mary’s encounter with God as His chosen in her poem, "May It Be Done:"

Fear not,
    but tell no one.

    You are now
    a bearer of the holy.

    Sit, pondering
    Mystery.

    There is no shadow
    in My Light,
    hovering
    above the face
    of your womb waters…
               (Read all of "May It Be Done.")

3. Modern Setting
Imagine a Christmas character or some of the story events in a modern setting. You’ll need to use your imagination and give yourself permission take some poetic license to write this poem.

4. Christmas Symbol
Choose a Christmas symbol (star, bell, poinsettia, manger, gift) and write a lyric poem examining it in depth. This may involve doing some of the research explained in  October’s column.
Jennifer Zolper’s poem “Star” is such a poem:

God didn’t mean to torment the astrologers.
He would fulfill the promise,
Send the shimmering Guide at
precisely the right moment.
But then, as ever, their seeing was as dark
as a moonless night.
How many eyes winked and squinted
Imagined holy stars that weren’t
Each rhinestone of Orion’s belt was suspect…
           (Read all of "Star.")

5. Christmas Symbol Personalized
Write a poem about what a particular Christmas symbol or object means to you. Chris Green expresses how he feels about seasonal tree markets:

    Christmas trees lined like war refugees,
    a fallen army made to stand in their greens.
    Cut down at the foot, on their last leg,

    they pull themselves up, arms raised.
    We drop them like wood;
    tied, they are driven through the streets…
              (Read all of "Christmas Tree Lots.")

6. Unlikely Character or Setting
Combine the season of Christmas with an unlikely character or setting; for example, Christmas for the single person, the homeless person, the immigrant etc.; Christmas in a nursing home, prison, hospital etc.

Utmost featured a Christmas poem contest a few years ago with just such a stipulation. I wrote “Menno Home Christmas” for it.

Best Christmases were long ago and far away.
Weihnacht? But all is wet and green; there is no snow.
“Good morning, Mrs. Rempel, how are you today?”

At breakfast munch the toast while carols play…
sang that one in a pageant once and stole the show;
best Christmases were long ago and far away.
          (Read all of "Menno Home Christmas.")

 7. Sad Christmas Poem
Though the Christmas season is usually a joyous time, for some it is a time of sadness, regrets, even desperation. Write a sad Christmas poem.
Fran Howell’s “Christmas Lights” is a good example. It begins:

A thin denim jacket shelters shoulders
slumped against darkness
arctic air squeezes
through broken zipper
temporarily reverses the sign
"Out of Work, Please Help!"
          (Read all of "Christmas Lights.")

8. Childhood Christmas
Write about Christmases from your childhood. Start gathering material by writing lists and word clusters. Focus on particulars and include sensual detail—sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch. You may decide to write your memories in prose first. Later distill what you’ve written into a poem.  Here are some of my memories—from my poem, "Bonding"—of unwrapping a Christmas doll:

…Carefully I deliver her
from the store-womb
undo each twist tie and rubber band
till she is free
and I can hug
her soft stuffed body…
          (Read all of "Bonding.")

9. Poignant Moment
Think back to a Christmas moment that was especially poignant—perhaps a moment of epiphany, when you understood something significant about Christmas. Charles van Gorkom brings us such a moment in “Christmas Prayer”:

…I remember long ago
on Harry Road
in a shed on Christmas night
I sat among sheep
with an oil lamp—
leaned sitting in the hay
against a fat sleeping ewe–
          (Read all of "Christmas Prayer.")

10. Christmas Reflections
Reflect on what Christmas means to you presently. Again use lists and word webs to gather your thoughts. Choose one of the things from your list and elaborate in a poem, or make your poem a list of things.
Mary Lou Cornish reflects:

I cannot write about a manger
without thinking of a cross.
When angels are glad-singing,
joy-bringing, I hear
sorrow-sobbing
desperate joy-robbing,
cries from a crowd dispirited
at the de-souling
of the incarnate God.
          (Read all of "I Cannot Write About a Manger.")

11. Christmas Specialist
Write about some aspect of the Christmas story from a specialist’s point of view. Are you a carpenter (Joseph), a farmer (shepherd), a hotelier (innkeeper), or a  civil servant (tax collector)?
Physician Darlene Moore-Berg’s poem “Embryology” takes the idea of how babies are formed in utero and writes about this aspect of the incarnation.

A subtle thing
one simple moment to the next
a rhythm, a pulsatile beat
and the heart of God
takes on a mortal cadence.

In a dark, muffled womb
four chambers form- room
to comprehend the flow
of human blood...
          (Read all of "Embryology.")

12. Christmas Acrostic
Choose a Christmas word (STAR, BELL, MANGER, ANGEL) or phrase and write an acrostic poem. Colin Marshall’s poem won an internet Christmas acrostic poem contest in 2007. Notice how it flows, so that the words beginning each line (which start with the required letters) feel natural, even inevitable.

When autumn trees have shed their last
In encore to summer past,
Silent nights grow longer still,
Harbinger to winters chill.
          (Read all of "Wishing You A Merry Christmas.")

13. Christmas Tune Lyrics
With the tune of a familiar Christmas carol or song in mind, write a poem as a set of new lyrics.

14. Model Poem
Choose a poem you love for whatever reason—rhythm, rhyme scheme, emotional tone—and write a Christmas poem patterned on it.

To do this, you may first want to analyze the model poem to discover what’s going on in it. Scan it and determine the rhyme scheme. You may decide not to follow it precisely, but it’s good to start out by being familiar with its construction.
One year, using “The Kye-Song of St. Bride” as a model, I composed “Christmas Echoes”:

Generous Christmas carries
Rare and radiant gift:
Gold, myrrh and frankincense begin
But thanks fall short, to our chagrin,
For Godhead wrapped in baby’s skin
Radiant, rare
Holy gift.
          (Read all of "Christmas Echoes.")

15. Ekphrastic Christmas Poem
Write a Christmas poem inspired by a painting, photograph or other visual work of art. John Dreyer’s poem was inspired by Frederico Barocci’s painting “Madonna and Child with Saint Joseph and the Infant Baptist” from the National Gallery in London.

Herod's recent butchery is passed away
in the Baraccio Madonna's blue sky morning;
Salome's request macabre and
Pilate's washing of his hands are
cowardices yet to come.
For now, her nephew's
teasing of the cat
distracts the nursing child
from her breast.
          (Read all of "Madonna's Blue Sky Morning.")

16. Christmas Poem That Isn’t
Write a Christmas poem in the form of some other kind of communication, an email, text message, postcard or news report for example. Here are some lines from my poem “Christmas Cake,” written in the form of a recipe:

November or early December’s the time
to start on this year’s Christmas cake

Pour several cups of sweet anticipation into a large bowl
– the first snowfall when we hauled out the Christmas records
– all the dolls in the Sears catalogue
– paint smells from the basement

Cut in a pound of cold reality
– the year I worked nights and slept through
– the first Christmas without Daddy
– the one I broke my wrist

and cream these ingredients.
          (Read all of "Christmas Cake.")

Now it’s your turn. Choose one of the prompts above to guide you. Combine the ingredients of the wonderful Christmas story with your unique experience and point-of-view. This meld of Christmas old and Christmas you is one sure way to create new Christmas poems—poems unlike any that have been written in all the years since God incarnate came to Bethlehem.

(This article was first published as a Poets Classroom article on Utmost Christian Writers, December 2008.)

Catching up

November is over. If you're wondering how I did with my November poem-a-day challenge, well, I certainly wasn't perfect. But I do have 24 new poem attempts in my files and that is much better than I would have done had I not set a 30-day goal.

One of the reasons I missed making my goal was that I got distracted by an exciting development in my 'career' (feels weird to call it that). As I mentioned before, a novel I have been working on for some years (and wrote the bulk of in November of 2009) made it onto the list of finalists of the 2011 Word Alive Publishing Contest. It was a few weeks ago in November that I made the final decision to self-publish that book through Word Alive Press. As a result I was busy, first considering my options, and then putting together the contract documents. I found it all energizing, yet draining, so that the last thing I wanted to do at the end some days was more creative thinking.

Regarding my book-publishing journey, it's still early days. Right now my manuscript is in the hands of a concept (big picture) editor. When I hear back from her, I'll consider the changes she suggests, get the story in as good shape as I can before I pass it on to the publisher's editor. And we go on from there. In the weeks and months ahead, I'll be writing about the publishing / marketing / publicity journey of that book, along with the usual poetry fare I often write about here.

I want to leave you with a couple of quotes from an insightful article I read in Writer's Digest many years ago. I filed it away, ran across it the other day and was inspired by it all over again.

"Most of a writer's life is just work. It happens to be a kind of work that the writer finds fulfilling in the same way that a watchmaker can happily spend countless hours fiddling over tiny cogs and bits of wire. Poets also love to fiddle with a word here, a word there—small spaces for hours. And when I'm working on a poem, I'm working harder than I've ever worked at anything in my life—I'm concentrating harder. But it's enjoyable. Not something I would describe as fun—it's more like rapture, a kind of transcendent play" - Diane Ackerman, "Tight Focus in Small Places," The Writer's Digest, September 1997, p.31.

And further on she says:

"Regard the world with affectionate curiosity and then write from the heart. You have to trust that you have something important to say and that you were put on earth to "stain the willows with a glance." And that the world will not look the same once you have written about it, that you will bring new life to the world through your vision" - same article, p. 33.

November—the month of writing craziness

It's November, National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo links thousands of writers around the world, who are even now pounding their keyboards in an attempt to accumulate at least 50,000 words and realize the goal of writing an entire novel in one month.

I was part of NaNoWriMo in 2009. And I churned out a novel—Destiny's Hands. After more work on it, I entered it into the Word Alive Press contest this spring and was ever so thrilled when it made the list of finalists. It may someday even see the light of publication.

I have not joined NaNo this year in the novel-writing sense. But in that spirit I have set my own November goal. For me November would be called NaPoWriMo - National Poetry Writing Month because I have promised myself to write one poem a day.

Robert Brewer at Poetic Asides planted the idea a couple of years ago with his November Poem-A-Day Chapbook Contest. He posts a new prompt every day of November and invites participating poets to send in a chapbook collection of their best poems (inspired by the prompts) at the end of December.

I am not planning to be part of this, but I do check his prompt every day to give me poem-writing ideas. If it doesn't inspire, I have a pocketful of other prompt sources: Adele Kenny's blog, Poets and Writers, and Writers Digest prompts to name a few.

I find such poem-a-day challenges good to get me to just write instead of wait for that extra-special inspiration that will end up in the GREAT POEM. Sure, I end up with a lot of mediocre poems, but Diane Lockward, in her November newsletter says that's okay. Talking about her recommended book for the month—Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking—she says:

"I underlined this: 'The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.' A good reminder that it's okay to do some bad work.

On risk-taking: 'And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding.' And 'to require perfection is to invite paralysis.'" - (Quotes by David Bayles and Ted Orland).

So there you have it—permission to write lots of poems with the hope that one or two will soar.

Throughout the month I'll be posting some of these on my poetry blog along with the prompt that inspired them. Maybe we'll see you over there?

Whatever you're writing through November, may it be a satisfying, productive month!

It's not always the right time to share your work

 It is becoming more and more accepted to share one's creative writing—poems, stories, personal essays—online. Still, doing that has its pitfalls, beyond the one that such works are then considered published and may not be eligible to submit to some publications and contests. Another danger is the effect that going public may have on you, the writer.

Bonni Goldberg talks about this in Beyond the Words.

"I often check my motives before I share by asking myself, what I want to get from making a given piece public. I know it's not the right time if my "want" list includes items such as empathy and understanding from my audience or their appreciation and attention rather than the opportunity to voice something I care about or to celebrate what moves me. As you take time to become aware of your motives to go public, you'll notice when it will be more nurturing and respectful to your Writing Self to wait" - Beyond the Words, p. 170.

Goldberg has opened a vein of truth here! I can think of times when I posted something, waited on tenterhooks for a response and when there was none, felt deflated and a failure. It pays to be aware of why we want to share something, and when is a good time. Sharing out of neediness can be a dangerous thing to the health of our creative selves.

Snatch those poetry moments

This blog has been sadly neglected in the last few weeks. I've been busy since the end of September, teaching a weekly class, welcoming my new granddaughter into the world, and celebrating Thanksgiving!

I miss the slower, lazier days of summer when I had time to moodle on poetry. I don't feel myself, somehow, when not tending that part of my writing plot. And yet it's the first to go untended, perhaps because it feels so much like play.

That is probably why the quote I found the other day resonated.

"A musician must make his music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to ultimately be at peace with himself." - Abraham Maslow

I also found this great little bit of wisdom from Barbara Crooker quoted in Your Daily Poem. Speaking about her publishing achievements (700 poems published in more than 2000 publications) she credits her success to perseverance as much as talent and says:

"Writing poetry is not putting down whatever comes into your head and leaving it at that, never taking it any further. Poetry involves layers, and a lot of revision." - Barbara Crooker

Hopefully today I'll find time to write another poem... or revise an old one!

When writing about God

Fernando Ortega (songwriter) gives advice to lyricists that applies to poets too:

• "Be specific when you write songs (poems) about God. 

• Avoid cliché. 

• Avoid convenience. 

• Avoid an obsession with the consumer. 

• Avoid the temptation to make commercial success your central goal. 

• Write with intelligence, employing all the craft, skill, and experience with which God has endowed you."

Read all of "Avoiding Convenience: A Word to Hymn Writers"