Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
You may use this image on your blog if you share a poem from this prompt.
The clocks have been set forward, the days are getting longer, and there is a rumor that spring is here. I forget how turbulent March can be. It’s like the weather can’t decide. There is a war between hot and cold, humid and dry, that causes wind and storms and then bright sunny days and flowers.
I love spring flowers. My photo app is full of them. One of my favorites is the wisteria vine. Wisteria is an invasive species in South Louisiana. My husband hates the insidious vines that rot wooden railings. I’ve lost the battle over trying to keep it in our yard. But this week they were blooming beautifully in our neighborhood. On my walk, I smelled their fragrance before seeing the vine.
wisteria vine, photo by Margaret Simon
Lavender leaves weep wander in March windy ways fragrant springtime tears
Margaret Simon, March haiku
Join me today and write a small poem in the comments or on your blog (leave a link in the comments). Be sure to support others with encouraging comments.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
“Writing for me is no different than playing basketball, it’s my body moving among and pushing up against and being moved by other bodies of language and the energy of language,” says Natalie Diaz in an interview with Brandon Stosuy in the Creative Independent, in which she talks about the physicality of writing and how her experience as a professional athlete and her Mojave culture affect how she writes. “I don’t only feel with my body, I think with it. Even text is a physical space for me.” This week, write a short essay describing what your writing process feels like. How does articulating the way you write help focus your process?
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Last week, Leigh Anne Eck sent an invitation to respond to a prompt, a party invitation, in which every participant leaves a quick-write bio patterned after Devon Gundry from Soul Pancake. Read more about the party invitation here.
Depending on when you met me, I would have been walking hand in hand with a black girl, my friend, because my parents never said that wasn’t ok, or I was playing in the woods becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder or jumping on the trampoline or into the swimming pool; you may have met a teenage educator wanting to change the world one kid at a time, or a girl writing daily in a diary, a young mother who learned to smock and sew in that order, a working mother driving in early dawn away from her family to teach 3rd graders. Depending on when you met me, you may have met a graduate student, a National Boards candidate, but if you met me today, you’d see MaMère in my eyes, falling in love all over again with babies and art.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
I was first introduced to Poetic Justice by Sarah Donovan at her site Ethical ELA in July, 2020.
Poetic Justice offers restorative writing and creative arts programs to women who are incarcerated. Since 2014, they have been offering classes in jails and detention facilities that engage in self-reflective, therapeutic writing: “By using poetry, women who have never written in their lives find the confidence to write from their hearts.” (They were featured on CNN Heroes.)
Because of the pandemic, Poetic Justice could no longer go into prisons and teach the writing workshops, but that didn’t stop them. Now they have more than 150 inmates and volunteers writing poetry and letters to each other. I volunteered to be a writing partner and am now in my third round of writing.
I believe in the power of poetry to heal. My writing partner, Kwain, has solidified that belief for me in the 8 months that we have been writing to each other. As with any deeply personal project, it has taken a while for her to trust me with her writing. I feel it is a privilege to receive it. This month we exchanged I am From poems.
I am From
I am from the homemade Jalapeño skillet cornbread with pig intestines known as chitlins. I am from the Dominoes playing as the adults yell out foul words as the odor of cigarettes corrupt the air of the room. I am from Earth, Wind, and Fire, R Kelly and soul music. I am from the state flower BlueBonnet, Texas Longhorn. I am from the small church known as Immanuel Baptist Church where I got saved when I was 9 years old. I am from a fatherless home. I am from being Independent is a must because all I had was my mom. I am from “Everything is bigger”. I am from Amarillo, Texas.
Kwain Monroe
The writing I receive from Kwain comes as scans of notebook pages. I write to her through a paid service (30 cents per letter).
If you are interested in this project, consider a donation. $25 can sponsor one inmate’s participation and supplies. Poetic Justice website.
On Sharing our Stories Magic, Ruth posts a weekly writing prompt. This week the prompt came as a challenge to write about a sunset without using color or seasonal language yet evoking a sense of both through the story. My mind naturally goes to poetry, so I wrote a poem. In June of 2019, my parents moved to a retirement home, and my siblings and I cleared out their home of 30 years. Even though, thankfully, Mom and Dad are both living healthy lives, the move was like a death. Their home on the lake had become a peaceful vacation spot for me and my family. I mourned this loss in this sunset poem.
The Last Time
You won’t know when the last day comes, but it will come with a sunset while you sit in the porch swing dangling your feet like you did as a child perhaps talking with your brother.
Hummingbirds will hum at the feeder, a blown glass ornament your mother left behind for you to fill with sweet water just to see their wings flutter hungrily, hearts beating faster than the speed of sound.
The orb that makes each day new ends this day in silent symphony hovering over the lake bathing it in jewels you can hold in your hand lay down in the velvet-lined jewelry box she left in her closet for you to find.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
I challenged myself to try Spark, a creative exchange between artists and poets. Artist Betty Nichols sent me an image of her art.
Painting by Betty Nichols
A process I’ve been playing with lately is paper collage. To get my head around this abstract painting, I decided to recreate it in collage. The paper I selected informed words I collected to write from. Here is my response collage.
Notebook collage in response to art by Betty Nichols
While searching for things to cut out, I found an article that included advice from Maria Shriver on how to make a difference. The first bullet point, “Sit with yourself” became the title. I cut out radicchio to get the red color. Doing research I found that radicchio is the “crunch VIP of salads.” The black flame came from a bee print paper. I let the list and collage sit for a few days. The process worked for me.
Sit with Yourself
The chicory radicchio is said to be the ultimate crunch in your daily salad, rich in vitamin K.
This red dagger isn’t dangerous.
The flame that is the yellow body of a bee harmlessly flying from tree to tree pollinates, perpetuating life.
This red dagger isn’t dangerous.
When you are faced with the sharp points of a knife you use every day, look closely. The stain of death may be the blood of birth, the path of its blade leading to light.
I sent Betty a blues poem, and she responded with tissue paper art. See our collaboration here.
At first I was completely intimidated by the idea of writing a poem to someone else’s art. By making it my own through my own art, I was able to find a way in to the original painting. The idea of sitting with yourself to make space for creativity comes up for me a lot these days. Creativity requires space as well as time for incubation. I hope you can find time and space to incubate and create. The process is its own reward.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Notebook Page 3/16/21
Playing with lots of creative ideas on this notebook page. I started with a falling apart copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I wanted to try writing a blackout (erasure) poem that had nothing to do with the actual content on the page.
The second thing I made was the notecard design. This is a method of meditation I learned last year at an art museum workshop (the fall of 2019 when we could go to these things.) It’s a simple concept. Choose 3 colors that express your mood. Set the timer for 3 minutes and follow where the lines take you. I use a meditation timer on my phone with some ambient sound.
I had been struggling for days to learn how to make an origami butterfly. I finally got one and added it to the page.
The final touches were some magazine cut-outs I had set aside for when I may need them. There is a creative satisfaction that happens when all the elements come together in a pleasing way.
Text of the black-out poem:
back to Sunday morning grudgingly skating on Zoom losing one face in the window just before lunch.
Margaret Simon, from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
I have subscribed to the National Geographic newsletter. One of these days I will break down and pay the subscription fee for full access because the images and articles are so inspiring. This one included photographs taken all around the world during the pandemic selected to express “how we deal.” My prompt for my students: select a photograph and take words from the text descriptions to write a poem. And I wrote, too.
I chose a photograph of a pregnant woman. My daughter found out she was pregnant around this day a year ago. I was drawn to the woman. Having a child during a pandemic can bring about heightened anxiety. As the grandmother, I felt the joy.
A moment is all it takes to cancel close lockdown.
A test of our humanity our hunger our resilience.
We cannot close our eyes, blind-out reality.
To grow a life inside a womb, nourish and protect, celebrate its birth– there is somewhere
to go, to be with a moment, comforted and belonging to the insanity of things.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Saturday brought warmer winds and time. My husband suggested a paddle on the bayou. Living on the Bayou Teche, we try to take opportunities to go out in the canoe. We know that too often we are too busy, or it’s too hot, or too cold, or too ___ fill-in-the-blank.
Our paddle to the East– soft breeze, flock of yellow-crown night herons, waves to friends on their back porch. Stop for a beer break, turn back toward the sunset. sun majestic on the water, an Eagle sighting, simple beauty.
Eagle over Bayou Teche at sunset, photo by Margaret Simon (iPhone)
In February I joined an amazing group of poets writing everyday to prompts about The Body on a Facebook group organized by Laura Shovan. Laura has posted all the marvelous prompts on her website.
Most days it was tough to get one poem written and some days I didn’t write, but one day I wrote two poems. The prompt was about the beautiful brain. On Facebook I posted a Golden Shovel from Emily Dickinson’s line “The brain is deeper than the sea.” But in searching my notebook for something to post today, I found a different poem. I didn’t like it when I wrote it, but now I kinda do.
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She is a retired elementary gifted teacher who writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 