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"Your Favorite Poet and Poem" Contest

Friday, 12/9: We’ve got a great start here, and thank you to those who said they’re working on their posts now! Please jump in!

Hello, Poets and lovers of poetry (and the rest of you out there)!

From Dec. 7 – 14, 2011 we’re having a crazy contest. To win, you must provide us with the most awesome answer to a few questions:

Who is your favorite poet?

What is your favorite poem?

Why?

Now, a cool thing about this contest is that your favorite poem may be a stand-alone you discovered — not necessarily by your favorite poet. And the answer to the question “Why?” is the critical piece. Why did you choose this poet? Why this particular poem? What is it that resonates with you, or just won’t let go?

UPDATE: Try to keep your responses to a few paragraphs. That said, if you have strong feelings and more words to say, consider whether you’d like to do a guest post on our blog to expand and share your thoughts.

We anticipate serious arm-wrestling and shouting by the end, as we select the ONE set of responses we feel best captures the essence of why we write, what moves us, creates unforgettable imagery . . . and we’d like your help to drive us nuts in this process. The winner will receive a copy of Lifelines, mailed to your house.

And, if you have a blog or website and would be interested in connecting to us or spreading the word, please let us know. We’re starting a blogroll.

So — thank you for reading this, and we hope you will have some fun and enter our contest.

Category:

Contest, Poetry

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Collage and Creative Writing: Common Threads

My writing and my art are so entwined that it is hard sometimes to separate them. As with writing, I’ve been collaging since I was a child. Collage is an old art form, revived in the 20^thcentury as modern art, consisting of portions of other works of art, text, purchased or handmade papers, embellishments or found objects glued to a background to make a new work of art.

I think of the process of creating a collage, or a poem, or any form of writing as largely intuitive and subconscious. It is in the reworking of the raw material that the new form is created.

For example, when I collage I may have a general idea of what I want to create, so I go through my boxes of clippings and images, pulling out anything that supports the idea and seems somehow to go together, or just strikes my fancy at the time. I select my surface and get my materials together- scissors, glue, anything I want to add to the work like ribbons or coins or what have you.

Then I start cutting out the images or text I like, seeing how they might go together. This influences the background I create, as there may be colors or a pattern I am especially drawn to in connection with the images.

I make the background, then select and place the items I have selected, switching them around, cutting some to combine two images into a cohesive unit. When I am satisfied, I start gluing them down. Sometimes I have to partially lift one image to place another behind it to add depth; sometimes I remove an image that just isn’t working.

The process is much like editing a piece of writing, cutting and rewriting and rearranging until it works.

I’m especially drawn to an intuitive process called Soul Collage, where 5 x 8 cards are created on mat board. It’s done entirely intuitively, usually without even a starting idea, just pulling what images appeal to me. This form of collage does not use text at all, leaving the interpretation of the card up to the viewer. The card’s creator asks and answers a series of questions about the card and it can provide some amazing insights into one’s psyche.

To me, that is a collage’s magic, the personal interpretation. When I made the collage that appears on the cover of the Lifelines book- long before the book was ever thought of- I was looking into the ocean of ideas for inspiration in many areas of my life, seeking the mermaid for answers. “Express!” is the only word in the collage, and that, I think, is the essence of the creative experience: express yourself, reveal yourself, and find your truth.

Category:

Creative Writing, Inspiration, Lines by Lin, Poetry

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Make Visible: Restoration Earth Journal Issue 1 Vol 1

“Lounging” by Anne Westlund

I’m happy to share the publication of my photos and poems in “Restoration Earth: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Nature & Civilization”. Alongside my work are other poems embedded within scholarly articles and the photos of Katie Batten MacDowell and my brother, Chris Westlund. This highlights how intimately wed our perception of nature and ourselves is with our thoughts about the relationship of ourselves to nature. When you read this journal, don’t see the poems and photos as discrete artwork, but as a complement to the scholarly sections, perhaps as a resting point on your journey through Restoration Earth. The sum is really greater than the individual components.

These poems reflect my spirituality along with my observations of the natural world. Except for “My Town” these poems emerged from the class, Ecology and the Sacred, that I’m taking at Ocean Seminary College. The photos are shots of deer and a seal, a child and her rabbit, and a drawing in the sand on the beach. To me, they all represent impermanence, a moment in time that my eye and camera caught: a deer resting, a seal waiting for it’s mother to come back, a young girl with her pet bunny, and a drawing of a geoglyph on the beach, soon to be washed away by the tide. I’m thrilled to contribute to the Restoration Earth Journal and to be a part of this publication.

This journal was released in November and is available as a free download, see below. It’s not every day that my work is featured alongside such illustrious scholars. This journal is put out by Ocean Seminary College and edited by Katherine Batten (MacDowell), D.Th and Mark Schroll, PhD.

Here is a description of the authors and writings included in the first issue of the Restoration Earth journal:

“Our debut issue has several contributions from students as well as several leading thinkers in the field of environmental studies and ecology and philosophy, including a previously unpublished essay by Arne Naess–the founder of the deep ecology movement and ecophilosophy; Alan Drengson a world-renowned professor and writer on deep ecology, environmental studies, and ecophilosopy; Michael Caley a well-known evolutionary biologist who has been running the ecosophical journal The Trumpeter for a number of years; and Florence R. Shepard a professor of biology and a widely published writer and the editor of all her late husband, Paul Shepard’s (whom many of you have read, one of his most famous works is Nature and Madness) work. Additionally, Mark Schroll is the leading expert on transpersonal ecosophy and for shamanic students he’s a very good brain to pick if you are working on your dissertation.

Our student contributions come from Mark Glasgow who has written a qualitative study on an interventional strategy associated with ecopsychology; Anne Westlund who has been generous and contributed her photography and poetic explorations of culture and the natural world; and Molly Remer who kindly reviewed a new text by writer Ellen LaConte for us.” ~Katherine Batten (MacDowell)

My poetry and photography can be found in the journal on these pages:

Cover: “Uffington Horse,” photo.

Title Page: “Uffington Horse,” process notes.

p.4: “Seal Pup,” photo.

p.33: “Attachment,” photo.

p.34: “A Natural Setting,” poem, biography.

p.62: “Tall Tale,” poem.

p.78: “The Next Layer,” poem.

p.96: “Lounging,” photo.

p.99: “Unbroken,” poem.

p.102: “My Town,” poem.

p.103: “Resting,” photo.

If you haven’t read Issue 1, Vol 1 of “Restoration Earth: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Nature & Civilization” be sure to grab your copy at http://www.oceanseminarycollege.org/RestorationEarth_1_1_2011.pdf

Restoration Earth is available as a hard copy here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/restoration-earth-1%281%29-2011/18719482

Category:

Creative Writing, Make Visible, Poetry

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What makes a poem?

What makes a poem

When I was a child, my definition of a poem was something that resembled “The Highwayman,” rhyming lines formed into stanzas, with evocative imagery, and that told a story. As I grew older, and discovered poets like Sandburg and Amy Lowell, I realized poems didn’t need to rhyme, and, as my poetic horizons expanded to include Whitman and Elliot, I realized that they didn’t have to tell a story. My definition of a poem became lines and stanzas with evocative imagery. Then I encountered prose poetry.

Now I’m not a big fan of prose poetry. For me, I need lines and stanzas to feel that it’s a poem, but modern poetry doesn’t agree with me.

So what makes a poem, beyond the let me read it, and I’ll let you know if it’s a poem? The use of language to move beyond literal meaning, to evoke a mood, a sensory image, by the way that language is used is the basis for poetry.

If you studied poetry in school, you may have studied poetic devices: rhyme, meter, alliteration, assonance, consonance, metaphor, simile, to name a few.

Rhyme is probably the most familiar: cat, hat, sat, bat, rat, with meter, the rhythm that the words form when read aloud, a close second. Alliteration, where words begin with the same consonant sound, assonance, where words have the same vowel sound, as in black cat, and consonance, where words have the same internal or ending consonant sounds as in near cure.

Here’s a poem of mine, in the tradition of Walter De La Mare’s The Listeners: It appered in the June, 2010 issue of ezine Dark Eye Glances. Notice how the first and last stanzas are nearly identical —
At Midnight

Three to ride the shadowed road,
two to catch them as they slowed,
one to flee and try to warn,
none to live to see the morn.

Three rode out one moonless night
beneath the shafts of silver light
of stars above in a cloudless sky
and none of them demanded why.

Not one of them asked why they rode,
why they left their snug abode
to ride the woods that dark, dark night
beneath the shafts of silver light.

When midnight chimed they stopped and stared.
Two strangers stood with broadswords bared.
Two brothers dead without a fight,
one brother left, one to take flight.

One brother turns and flees in fright,
rides and dies that dark, dark night,
killed by strangers with broadswords bared.
Three brothers caught all unprepared.

Three to ride the shadowed road,
two to catch them as they rode,
one to flee and try to warn,
none to live to see the morn.

Category:

Creative Writing, Margaret's Musing, Poetry

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Margaret Fieland poetry

On Writing Poetry

Poetry is about truth, and writing truly exposes me, even if I am not the subject of the poem. If I pull my punches, soften my truth, or omit some detail that I feel exposes me, I stab my poem in the gut. I have to write truth, though not necessarily for publication.

The poem that propelled me, indirectly, into serious poetry writing is a case in point. I was in a meeting, listening to someone talk about his drinking, and inspiration struck. I hauled out my handy pad and pen, and, ignoring the nudges of my companion, (She: “What are you doing?” Me: “Taking notes.”), jotted down what would become one of my first published poems. But it was about a sensitive subject, and I hesitated to submit it for publication. Would people assume the narrator of the poem was me? Maybe not, but at the very least, the poem would clearly indicate that the subject was one that mattered to me. Was I willing to risk that? Ultimately I decided I was.

Some time after that, I wrote a poem about a batch of chicken soup (I was annoyed, and I find writing poetry can be wonderfully therapeutic) and hesitated before writing, “I wanted to hit her with the soup pot.” Yes, the line ended up in the poem. Best of all, by the time I’d finished writing it, the impulse itself had passed.

Here’s the poem. It was published in the June, 2006 Humdinger (www.humdingerzine.com):

Bitter

I don’t want to hear how unhappy you are
because I didn’t buy any Roast Beef at the deli
or because I made Chili from Dave’s recipe
with the six tablespoons of Chili powder

and Minestrone
with the rind from the Parmesan cheese in the broth
just like Marcella does.

It was enough to make me want to hit you
with the soup pot.

And if you’re ever happy with my cooking,
then please tell me.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Category:

Creative Writing, Margaret's Musing, Poetry

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Lines by Lin

I Wouldn’t Trade It

Tall geeky-girl brunette whose lungs don’t work well,
Refuses to see the end of the road
Southern accent trills Edna St. Vincent Millay,
Shoots coffee out her nose with Billy Collins,
Haunted by Greek mythology, Lonesome Dove,
Prince of Tides.

Not just literature and poetry saturate my heart and soul —
Anything to do with art, music, and my Nature mother
Real life too, my yen for chocolates and Riesling wine
Timeless hours with kin and friends and sanctified solitude
Sweet incense of lavender wands
Perky daffodils boldly yellow,
While on a table sits Quan Yin
Contented with crucifixes and candles,
My floured hands punching down sourdough bread
In another room.

Later, dog and cat invade my bed, which will leave me
Clinging awkwardly to the edge
But it’s all good.

Category:

Creative Writing, Introductions, Lines by Lin, Poetry