It’s Sunday evening as I write this, and I’m looking forward to a rainy Monday as you–possibly–read this. Even though my blogging home is called A Writers Window, it’s been a while since I’ve posted much about the writing in my window. Last week I hinted I’ve been busy so I thought since we’re in the midst of National Poetry Month I’d give you a peek at what I’ve been up to.

This is a photo from this past Saturday when my town officially kicked off National Poetry Month, with the mayor reading a proclamation and local poets doing a public reading in our beautiful Mural Court. Our local writers group worked on this event for several months. Friend and fellow poet Richard Band spearheaded and I was happy to be the backboard for him to bounce ideas off of.

One of the biggest projects, and closest to my heart, is a poetry collaboration with my Poet Sisters. I’ve mentioned them before and one of the photos includes us with our mentor and friend, Joseph Bathanti. We four women met in Joseph’s class during a Table Rock Writers Workshop just over 10 years ago. We bonded so well, we continued our writing together even though we’re scattered from SC, to NC, to TN. Over the years we met for our own retreat somewhere and spent the weekend sharing poetry prompts (various ideas to spark a poem) and hammering out poems … or at least the first crappy drafts of them. We ended up with 50 prompts, so each of us had at least 50 poems in various stages of completion. We met again last November, added a few last prompts, and culled 20 we want to include in the collection; working from the same 20 prompts, we’ll each contribute 20 poems.

What kinds of things are prompts? Here are some examples: write about a dream, a good-bye poem, finish the phrase: The first time I … , a picnic poem, poems based on a quote or color or song. Whenever we gathered, we spent time outside, whether hiking, walking a prayer labyrinth, or visiting a cemetery. Sometimes we each just took a piece of space outside our lodging to simply ‘be.’ We wrote about those experiences.

What will make this collection unique is how our different voices responded to the same prompts. Dee is our oldest sister, late 70s, who still plays softball in a Senior League that won state and national championships last year. She also has a doctorate in a geography-related field and her poems connect to nature, Indigenous Peoples, and the spirit world.

Sue is also in her 70s, a former high school English teacher and the one we affectionately call our wrangler. She’s a prolific writer with several books of poetry about her kinfolk, their lives, and her life in the hollers of Tennessee.

Laurie’s background is as a violinist (I think that’s the stringed instrument she plays, maybe cello?) and is our nature lover writing poems that transcend salamanders and bugs and plant life of the Appalachians to a realm that embraces the cosmos. Her favorite forms at the moment are haikus and haibuns (part haiku, part prose), packing so much in small poems.

And me? I have no idea. Of the poems for this collection, there’s one about the murder of my Grands’ birth mother, there are a couple about homesteading when we first moved to the Carolinas, one about sharing popcorn with my sisters beneath the cigarette and pipe smoked haze of my grandparents’ living room. Some are sacred, some are spiritual, several aren’t either.

While free-verse is often easier to write, I’ve pushed myself to write several poems in traditional forms for this collection … which is why I missed a Monday at my window. I was pulling my hair while pulling words for a sestina and a haibun. The sestina is my dream poem and these are the pieces that had to go into it. The dreamcatcher was bought at the Bratwurst Festival (Bucyrus, Ohio) probably twenty-four years ago.

Of the twenty poems I’m supposed to have finished, or mostly finished, by May when my Poet Sisters meet again, I have 8 that aren’t to that point. But it’s National Poetry Month so what better way to celebrate it than by writing! … but I’m finished with traditional forms.

I’m also working on a short story for a journal, moonShine review, celebrating its 21^st year of publication. Twenty-one years of publication is a huge milestone in this business. I’m honored to have been published in it a couple of times and hope this newest short will be accepted.

Tomorrow, or Tuesday if you’re not reading this on Monday, I’m leading a mini creative writing workshop for my local arts council, so I’ve been making notes and gathering resources. Even though we’ll be talking about prose writing, I’ll throw in a bit of poetry. After all, April is National Poetry Month.

Have you read any good poetry yet this month? I’ll share some new poetry books during Book Review Monday! later this month. Have you written any poetry this month–good or bad? Why not give it a try using some of the prompts I listed?

Ahhh the rain has started and it’s getting late. I hope you have a great week and I’ll be back on Monday. Here’s a picture from my yard–not of pollen this week–that’s inspiring some poetry. It’s called Bugleweed and the bees love it.