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Showing posts from August, 2017

Who would not do without: a poetry post

Yesterday I set you a creative writing challenge , so today I'm sharing what I've come up with. Please do share yours too, stick your link in the comments, or just share what you've come up with. I rolled a three so got the snippet from Sergio Ortiz' poem, Day of the Dead: "They married. Julia, carried down the aisle / by two old lovers, found the lost bottle of rum" I was taken with the idea of Julia not wanting to marry, or perhaps she did want to marry but knew it was hopeless. That her former lovers would present her to her husband as if she were theirs to give. I was also fascinated with the merging of the funeral and the wedding. At the moment I'm interested in writing in the first person plural, so I thought I'd explore the idea of a funerary wedding from the point of view of the bride bearers. I've given you six of them. I initially wrote this in the voice of the bride, but I kind of feel that the point of this is that her voice is

Using prompts and dice: a creative writing exercise

It's been a while since I've shared a creative writing exercise with you. Something like this one I shared two years ago, which was inspired by weird lines I was saying for Vocal ID . Right now I'm mainly writing things inspired by other poems (plus lines of dialogue on TV and all sorts of other random nonsense). Today I'm sharing six bits of other poems with you. I'm keeping it to two lines from each poem, although of course, you might want to look into the poems a bit more. However, for this exercise and understanding of context is not really important, it's more about what it sparks. Here are the six bits: 1) "And before the end comes, the complete / corrosion of all things beautiful..." from Ruin by Joel M Toledo - find the whole thing on And Other Poems here . 2) "that love, that life, that creation / is more than wanting." from Love by me, Cara L McKee. Find the whole thing here . 3) "They married. Julia, carried down t

Up here: a poetry post

I don't seem to be achieving much at the moment. I'm trying to write a synopsis for the Rose book, and in doing that I'm losing confidence in the story (which is me, not the story). My youngest stressed me out by tumbling all the way down the stairs and hitting her head (she seems fine if sore), and my middlest child is out of sorts, which is constantly worrying me. I am finishing up with very little useful brain.  Anyway, I saw that Sara at Mum Turned Mom  had suggested the prompt 'High' this week, and it reminded me of the song of the same name by New Model Army , which considers how irrelevant all our concerns are when seen from the top of a hill. There are lots of other songs with a similar feel, but I like New Model Army, so I headed to the top of my local hill to see and hear what I could see, singing to myself another one of my favourites by them - I Love the World .  I've ended up with a poem inspired by I Love the World (for the structure), and

The Potential: a poetry post

Sara at Mum Turned Mom has chosen the word 'potential' as her latest prompt. To be honest, I was stuck there for a while, but then I was thinking about gravitational potential energy and Wile E Coyote, and I came up with this poem, which I've also done a reading of on Facebook live ( click here for that ): The Potential This poem, poised on the precipice has potential to kill you dead. To whistle its way down to a million-mile-away valley floor landing in its own mini-mushroom puff. But it won't. You'll just beep, and run on by or maybe pause for a moment wondering why it's poised just so, was it put there on purpose? Or has its context  been whittled and abridged away? Perhaps you see my design in balancing this poem here with all its potential. Pause a while longer,  and you'll see yourself in it. Ⓒ Cara L McKee 27/4/17