Soon the Red Wolf Inspiration

Each month, as part of The Stafford Challenge writing group led by Brian Rohr of Portland, Oregon, I look forward to the virtual writing workshops and visits with poets. Earlier this month, Melissa Helton, Director of Literary Arts at the Hindman Settlement School in rural Appalachia, offered a bonus writing workshop in which she shared several of her favorite poets, their poems, and prompts to inspire us to write our own poems. For the next few days, I’ll share the way she presented the information and the way she led attendees to write poetry using mentor poems.

When we arrived in the session, Brian introduced Melissa, who took us on an exploration of four poets by briefly sharing a little about each. Then, she shared a poem that had stuck with her. She read a single poem by each writer and then gave a prompt, inviting us to write our own poems.

One poet was Annie Woodford, who wrote the poem Soon the Red Wolf. You can read the poem here. The after-reading prompt was to write a poem about some kind of extinct or invasive species in our own areas. My mind immediately went to Cogongrass, a leading invasive species in the rural southeastern United States. It’s one of the reasons we are not supposed to bring firewood into any of the campsites we visit. Because Cogongrass is so hard to eradicate (like kudzu), even the seeds that might be left on a saw blade cutting trees used as firewood could be transported into areas through the firewood and take root in state parks. I suppose that really, these seeds could do the same thing on tires of cars, e-bikes, or even yard toys kids may take camping, but we respect the rules and their reasons.

A Seed on a Prayer