Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “Heart On Fire” by Ada Limón, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about getting in trouble.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday November 18th at 12pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Heart On Fire” by Ada Limón

As a foster child, my grandfather learned not
to get in trouble. Mexican and motherless—dead
as she was from tuberculosis—he practiced words
in a new language and kept his slender head down.
When the other boys begged him to slip into
the music shop’s upper window to steal harmonicas
for each of them, music being important, thievery
being secondary, he refused. When the cops came
to spot the boys who robbed the music store, they 
could easily find the ones spitting broken
notes into the air, joyously mouthing the stainless 
steel, mimicking men on street corners busking 
for coins. But not my grandfather, he knew not
to risk it all for a stolen moment of exaltation.
It’s easy to imagine  this is who I come from, a line
of serious men who follow the rules, but might I add
that later he was a dancer, a singer, an actor whose best roles
ended up on the cutting room floor. A cutup, a ham
who liked a good story. Who would have told you
life was a series of warnings, but also magic. Once,
he was sent for a box of matches and he put that box
of strike-anywheres in the pocket of his madras shirt
and ran home, he ran so fast to be on time, to be good,
and when he did so, the whole box ignited, so he was
a boy running down the canyon road with what
looked like a heart on fire. He’d laugh when he told 
you this, a heart on fire, he’d say, so you’d remember.

Limón, Ada. The Hurting Kind. (2022) “Heart On Fire” p.62. Minneapolis: Milkweed Edition.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem “At Blackwater Pond” by Mary Oliver, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “The beautiful thing that just happened is…”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday November 14th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

At Blackwater Pond ” by Mary Oliver

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have
settled
after a night of rain. 
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?

Copyright © 2006 - 2010 Famous Poets And Poems . 

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from “This Here Flesh” by Cole Arthur Riley, posted below. 

Our prompt was: Start with “I will not apologize...”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday November 7th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

"This Here Flesh" by Cole Arthur Riley

"Rest is an act of defiance, and it cannot be predicated on apol-
ogy. It's the audacity to face the demands of this world and
proclaim, We will not be owned.
     We will not return to the chains that once held us. They are
brittle and tarnished from our tears, which made the flood.
Remember. You were never meant to prove your dignity. You,
whose flesh contains more bodies than your own. You don't
belong in the catacombs of restlessness, wandering from death
to death. Lie down with me in the pasture, where life is alive
and growing with the unapologetic slowness of a blade of
grass. What will become of us?
     We will be free and we will be dreaming."

Credit: This Here Flesh by Cole Arthur Riley (page 157) 

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at the painting “Strange Shadows (Shadows and Substance)” by Gertrude Abercrombie, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about what’s hidden or revealed in a shadow.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday November 4th at 12 pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

“Strange Shadows (Shadows and Substance)” by Gertrude Abercrombie

© 2022 Hyperallergic

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read the poem An Old Story by Tracy K. Smith, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “ Write about a color that has made you weep. ”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday October 28th at 6 pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

An Old Story by Tracy K. Smith

We were made to understand it would be
Terrible. Every small want, every niggling urge,
Every hate swollen to a kind of epic wind. 
 
Livid, the land, and ravaged, like a rageful 
Dream. The worst in us having taken over 
And broken the rest utterly down. 
 
                                                                 A long age 
Passed. When at last we knew how little 
Would survive us—how little we had mended 
 
Or built that was not now lost—something 
Large and old awoke. And then our singing 
Brought on a different manner of weather. 
 
Then animals long believed gone crept down 
From trees. We took new stock of one another. 
We wept to be reminded of such color. 

Credit: poetryfoundation.org
Tracy K. Smith, "An Old Story" from Wade in the Water.  
Copyright © 2018 by Tracy K. Smith.  

 

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we viewed the short film Forty-Nine Limbs by Melissa Miller, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write about what’s left behind.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday October 24th at 6 pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a poem First Fall by Maggie Smith, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write an introduction to a season or Write about knowing it will come back.“

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday October 21st at 12 pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

First Fall by Maggie Smith

I’m your guide here. In the evening-dark
morning streets, I point and name.
Look, the sycamores, their mottled,
paint-by-number bark. Look, the leaves
rusting and crisping at the edges.
I walk through Schiller Park with you
on my chest. Stars smolder well
into daylight. Look, the pond, the ducks,
the dogs paddling after their prized sticks.
Fall is when the only things you know
because I’ve named them
begin to end. Soon I’ll have another
season to offer you: frost soft
on the window and a porthole
sighed there, ice sleeving the bare
gray branches. The first time you see
something die, you won’t know it might
come back. I’m desperate for you
to love the world because I brought you here.

Credit: poetryfoundation.org
Maggie Smith, "First Fall" from Good Bones.  
Copyright © 2017 by Maggie Smith.  

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read an excerpt from “Whereas Statements” by Layli Long Soldier, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “ Whereas…”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday October 17th at 6 pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Excerpt from “Whereas Statements” by Layli Long Soldier

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we took a close look at photos from a series titled Bedside Manner by Corrine Botz, posted below. 

Our prompt was: “Write who is seen.”

More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday October 10th at 6 pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

Bedside Manner by Corrine Botz