Category: Creativity

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Blue Ridge Writer’s Conference Day 1 : Things I Love

The original courthouse is now the home of the Blue Ridge Arts Council

there’s nothing I don’t love

about the Blue Ridge Arts Center

from its towering columns

of stately presence

to its history and artful womb

this birthing center for

pottery, dance, painting,

sketching, mosaic, sculpture,

stained glass, yoga, tea blends, origami,

jewelry making, drama, weaving,

poetry, plant pressing,

paper mache, woodcarving, and

exhibits of inspiration but what

I love best is that there is something

for everyone ~

including writers

In the first session, I wrote an I’m From poem, which I’ve written several times through the years – but it changes every time.
We also learned about a Color Study. I’ll be featuring this one on Ethicalela.com sometime this year as a prompt.
A Poetry Reading during the Opening Reception in the old courtroom
I love the old sink and the windowsill deep enough to grow friendly flowers.
The Opening Reception was held in the main part of the old courthouse.

Oh, how I wish our county held a writer’s conference. Maybe that’s my next venture, starting in fall of 2026: to conjure up a place for art to happen here in one of the most beautiful places in rural Georgia. If that ever happens, The Art Center at Blue Ridge will be my model. I need an old farmhouse or barn with an exhibit space and smaller spaces for workshops and rooms upstairs for visiting artists and an old sink with a deep window ledge for plants and a fresh pot of coffee……..and I’ll keep dreaming.

Check out this amazing place and all it has to offer here.

Read more about this year’s writing conference here.

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A Paint Chip Haiku Chain

Nothing thrills me more than going in the hardware store and swiping a few paint chips for writing poems. Today, I’ve taken a variety of colors on a theme and created chained haiku using the words on the chips.

solemn silence ~ hush

meditation time: journal

white – windswept leaves write

a dandelion

wish across green hillside groves

{{spring grass love poems}}

fresh sprout rainwater

mossy cavern healing plants

enchanted meadows

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February Open Write Day 4: Inhabiting Life More Fully

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Amber from Oklahoma is our host today for the fourth day of the February Open Write. She inspires us to write observational haikus, just as the main character in Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo does. You can read Amber’s full prompt and the poems of others here.

life rhythms in taps

fingers counting syllables

taking it all in

making sense this way

of all that’s illogical

poems can do that

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February Open Write: Love Poems Inspired by Black Poets

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Donnetta Norris of Texas is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com with a LOVEly invitation for this Saturday morning in February to kick off this month’s Open Write. You can read her full prompt and poem here. Her Paul Laurence Dunbar-inspired poem Invitation to Love in turn inspired me to mirror a poem by a favorite black poet. I love so many – Jericho Brown, Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Clint Black, and many more – – but of course, Lucille Clifton captures my soul in every poem. I fell in love with blessing the boats (at St. Mary’s)when its final line was chosen for the National Poetry Month theme a couple of years ago. She inspired me to lower case my letters in an e.e. cummings style, and I have been doing that ever since in most poems I write. Here is Clifton’s mentor poem I took from The Poetry Foundation as my inspiration for the prayer poem I wrote today:

blessing the boats
                  (at St. Mary’s)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back  may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

Here is my prayer poem, filled with love:

blessing the children (and theirs)

may these prayers
offered each morning
whispered Heavenward
from the Rav4 road to work
(my prayer chamber)
multiply exponentially
with peace, health, safety,
sobriety, love, joy, provision, and
all good things
may these intercessions
meet you where you are and
keep you in God’s grace
may they stir in your heart
blessing you and yours
with a holy head kiss
divine in all love
lingering through the years
forever

Amen.

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Flat Ollie: A Skinny Poem

Have you ever seen a dog that can flatten himself right into a chair, a bed, or the floor? If our Ollie were a poem, he’d be a skinny poem. He could win an upside-down limbo contest and beat a snake at it.

he flattens out

Ollie

rescued

schnoodle

skinny

Ollie

abandoned

neglected

adopted

Ollie

he flattens out

Taken from The Skinny Poetry Nation blog: The “Skinny” is a short poem form that consists of eleven lines. The first and eleventh lines can be any length (although shorter lines are favored). The eleventh and last line must be repeated using the same words from the first and opening line (however, they can be rearranged). The second, sixth, and tenth lines must be identical. All the lines in this form, except for the first and last lines, must be comprised of ONLY one word. The Skinny was created by Truth Thomas in theTony Medina Poetry Workshop at Howard University.

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PaintChip Patchwork Poem

When my husband goes into the local hardwares store, I never miss a chance to go and admire the paint chips and their color names. Secretly, I want that job. I want to name paint colors based on themes and even literary works. Little Red Riding Hood for the bread baskets in the pantry, lined with Bo Peep White-As-Sheep linen napkins, Little Boy Blue for the nursery, and Green Gables for the metal plant stand. I’m open for any job interviews a paint company would like to offer.

For now, though, while I work my way toward retirement from education as long as my mind will stay sharp enough to think and make sense of logical things, I press on and enjoy the creative side as I piddle in the hardware store while my husband shops for ideas on how to make a flag pole for our camper before camping season gets back in full swing.

I found these colors last night and began arranging them on a theme.

Next, created a chained haiku using the paint chips. I ordered the colors and imagined a countryside with a quaint cottage and a vegetable and herb garden, with a greenhouse right outdoors in the back yard inside a white fence.

And then I wrote in my backpack journal. 5-7-5, lines of haiku, loving the challenge and order of counting syllables and making things fit. I tucked the paint chips into my hand to bring them home and re-order them another time. I could have baskets and baskets of paint chips around the house and never grow tired of arranging them. Magnolia Home chips are my favorite – – they are just the right size and texture, have the most appealing font that even my aging eyes can see, are well-named, and are the most appealing paint colors of any of the other brands.

I could live

in the world

of paint chips and poetry

plants and herbal teas and

English gardens

with quaint countryside cottages

bell-peppered container gardens

wildflowers

a rope hammock

in the shade of a towering oak

and a local library within

walking distance so I

could pull my wagon there

and wheel home the stories.

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Odd Text Day

she began early

random odd texts

throughout her day

photos of soap

rainbow sherbet dreams

mushroom coffee moments

just a prank

to bring smiles

and endless laughter

My daughter sent me a reel earlier this week with some girl on Instagram saying that she was going to send her brother random boring, senseless updates by text the following day – things no one would care about, really. So my older daughter decided to do the same for her own brother. That’s what happened today. I woke to photos of the random texts and spent a day with the best medicine – – laughter!

She has her next “victim” in sight, and I can’t wait!

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A Found Poem: Ghost Spells

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Sometimes I like to take a stack of books and search for lines that speak to me to create found poems in random order to see if they make sense – kind of like a scavenger hunt. I used the following books and found 4 ten-syllable lines broken into five syllables with line breaks, in this order:

The Lost Spells by Robert McFarlane and Jackie Morris

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

James by Percival Everett

North Woods by Daniel Mason

Ghost Spells

the world is sudden

with wonder again

we can go over

the new winter list

I’m sorry to have

barged into your home~

how affectionate

I feel for my ghosts