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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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The Taste Test

when you want an excuse for more donuts

but don’t want to be seen as a pig

give it another purpose

(pretend you don’t want the donuts)

schedule a

Saturday morning taste test

in the name of science

and product review

line them up

be indecisive

above all

remain inconclusive

with intentions of

another taste test

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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 5: Characters We’ve Loved

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Seana Hurd Wright of Los Angeles is our host today for the fifth and final day of the February Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. You can read Seana’s full prompt and the poems of others here. Today, Seana inspires us to write poems about the favorite characters we’ve had over the years.

Christopher Robin for President

I

wore the

shirts growing

up, emblazoned

with Winnie the Pooh

Sears Catalog clothing

of the Hundred Acre Wood

where Christopher Robin’s friends

diverse as they were, got along

and I want to start a shirt movement:

let’s all move to the Hundred Acre Wood

(which doesn’t need to be made great again)

because it never lost its friendship

nor its caring for others, nor

its giving more than it it took

you see, those characters

had embracing hearts

who knew how to

keep focus

on what

lasts

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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 Day 3: Healing Hurts

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Our host today for the third day of the February Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Britt Decker of Texas. She inspires us to write poems of hurt and healing You can read Britt’s full prompt and the poems of others here. Britt inspires us to write a poem in any form we’d like that considers a moment, object, process, relationship, or anything else, that has simultaneously acted as a healing and hurting agent. 

depths of forgiveness

understood, finally, as

she welcomed her child

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February Open Write Day 2: Hope Lies Within

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Stacey L. Joy of Los Angeles, California is our host today for the second day of the Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com. She writes, “Back in April 2021 for Verselove, our Ethical ELA friend, Dr. Kim Johnson, prompted us to write a mirror poem by finding words from another poet to use in our original poems. I fell in love with You, too, Can Fly by Zetta Elliot. And I fell deeper in love with the Etheree as my form. It’s Black History Month, and my heart longs for hope during such difficult times. I know our ancestors left us with hope. It’s up to us to find it and spread it.”

You can read Stacey’s full prompt and the poems of others, along with the process for writing an etheree here.

I used two of my favorite black poets’ works today, and one favorite of Mexican-American descent, to blend an etheree in celebration of all strong women of this nation: Lucille Clifton (won’t you celebrate with me) and Maya Angelou (The Human Family), two strong women whose poetry modeled what our reigning US Poet Laureate Ada Limon meant when she wrote How To Triumph Like A Girl. And here we are, standing on this bridge together.

Lifting Our Shirts

take

my hand

celebrate

togetherness

strength in unity

we are more alike, my

friend(s), than we are unalike

the human family survives

on this bridge of lady heart triumph

just lift our shirts and see to believe it

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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.