Poetry – Creative Life Midwife

How to Write Anywhere from Random Inspiration, an Old School Pencil plus a Sprinkling of Word-Love

July 27, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

I wrote the majority of the poem below at one of Bakersfield’s quirkiest fast food drive-thru windows. They make fabulous veggie breakfast burritos, so my intent to feed Emma and take a moment or two of solace was met when I stumbled past my to-do list for a moment of writing play from a page of a college text book published the year I was born.

I wrote with a very appropriate yellow, number two wooden pencil. I wrote in cursive and asked my sixteen-year-old son if he could even read cursive. “Kinda,” he said from the back seat as I showed him my fledgling work of art.

Any tiny slice of these moments this morning would never entered into the minds of the faculty of Louisiana Polytechnic institute when the pored over the just right content and the most highly regarded readings for college freshman who were born while Europe was being flattened by hate and might and fervor.

When this writer-poet-word-lover started making art and word prompts from book pages purchased at library book sales and SPCA Fundraisers, word-lust and art collided to create… what you’ll find below.

By the way, a fun way to create writing prompts on the go is to use a daily newspaper. Circle three words from an article and use those words to inform your content in a poem or a paragraph, a tweet or an Instagram story.

Now, for this poem:

Blue Waltz and Brillcreem – (She loves the words exactitude and abstraction together)

Exactitude met abstraction in two lines in a 1950’s textbook

staunch and quirky, measurable and a running-off-the-table’s edge

puddle straddling similar yet always slightly or eons apart concepts,

Can you see them? free range and structured words abandoned,

unpolished: abstract exactitude – sweet and savory, Abbott and Costello

letters whose sole aim was to assist today’s dead or nearly dead then adolescents figure

out what language really meant.

Language: still alive and forever

captured because this poem is being written now, decades later

and you are in fact reading or hearing this

language habadashery, stitched earnestly into a semblance

of something – hopefully not completely unpleasant.

The wonder, the strength of the academic lust mixed with brill creem and

Blue waltz, cardigans and denim, cuffs turned up at the bottom –

Nothing but ephemera now. Intangible abstraction, once fragrant

Exactitude mixed with optimism and blind hope-filled ambition

###

It isn’t brilliant poetry AND yet it felt so good to write. The process opened me to some fun language I may continue to play with perhaps as a stand alone prompt or two or perhaps, I’ll take this poem on a “revision date” and feel full with it.

My bet is YOU have writing that would benefit from a revision date as well.

I just had a thought we might create a time of “revision date night” and pull out works such as these to fine tune and prepare for publication. Definitely worth considering.

I’ll close with a video I just created to inspire your writing using the sense of smell. Since this post was inspired by a drive through window and this video was inspired by the smell of pancakes, let’s move there for a moment now.

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

How the Language of Every Day Creates…. Contentment, A-ha Moments & More

May 16, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

What would you say if I told you this post was built upon two five minute writing sessions and a life inspired by challenges and overcoming fear, a long held and unrecognized until recently addiction?

Here’s the thing: I believe in writing in 5 minute chunks. This is well documenting. Allowing words to flow and then massaging them later simply works.

In the next paragraph there is a quote by William Stafford. I read this quote and a poem (tomorrow a video of me reading it will be at the bottom of this post) and the rest of the words tumbled forth, musical notes accompanied by a five-minute exercise I created called the #5for5BrainDump.

Join me, now, on this word adventure.

“When you make a poem you merely speak or write the language of every day, capturing as many bonuses as possible and economizing on losses; that is, you come aware to what always goes on in language, and you use it to the limit of your ability and your power of attention to the moment.”

William Stafford

I challenged myself to write poetry this time: no institution or celebratory month is guiding me.

It is purely my desire to practice, my will to dig more deeply, bring to life my idea that poetry creation might help me to figure stuff out a little bit better than… not.

I have a word pool (a collection of words to stir up the process and serve as a sort of paint-on-a-writing-palette and my timer is moving.

Grind groove habit hang up “into” manner matter of course mode observance.

It (fear) comes upon me it seems without warning, like the breeze suddenly lifting my hair from my shoulders

Flirting with me, making me feel more than slightly feminine and deep inside my core whispers, “You are a girl, this is what it is, sink into that feeling of something else moving your hair, giving you that weightless out of control oh, doesn’t that feel just right” feeling and I stop, my stomach beginning to churn, “no, it isn’t like that it isn’t like that.”

Is it like the way you feel when you are dancing, grooving, moving your body in a way that feels slightly to the left of heaven and full steam ahead into paradise when you catch someone looking with the eyebrow raised just so and the tongue on the tip of the cluck so you skip a beat and stop and slow and sludge becomes the order of the day and you forget you love to dance and you certainly don’t get anything except regret back anytime soon.

It is a matter of course then? An item on the daily to-do?

Feel fear and be paralyzed, all the time?

How to invite fear and expand it horizontally and vertically in 5 simple blood curdling steps?

Take five doses of fear daily and be sure to get nowhere in life except frightened. Repeat doses daily, add another dosage if nothing happens.

I almost stop typing because it is so preposterous and I know the adage of “what we focus on grows” so I remind myself, “This is just a game.”

Passionate Possibilities otherwise known as my week long Daily to-do list:

When I feel fear creep into my space, take note of it. Pre-program responses such as these to say internally and aloud if it helps. . “Fear – I see you for who you are. You are not welcome here. Good bye! Today, I choose courage.”

When I feel fear creep into my space, I will feel my feet on the ground – every inch of connection noted to the floor, the carpet, the sand, the grass, the concrete and I will express gratitude for the feeling of connection. I will repeat, “Today, I choose courage.”

When I feel fear mocking my femininity through seduction or flirtation, I will note it and remember the potent heroes and sheroes of the feminine. I will reach my hands out and build a bridge with them. I will affirm myself, “This is a bridge over fear to courage. Today, I choose peace.” (The word after today I choose may change according to what feels the most resonant with that day.)

My five-minute-timer went off about three minutes ago.

I elected to continue writing because the insights were continuing to be born. I knew actively giving them space would net more benefit for me and for you, my readers, so I chose to stay with it because today I am choosing courage, peace, poetry and you and me.

Who will be brave enough to tell me about your fear or better yet, who else is brave enough to begin building that bridge from fear into courage?

Maybe you’ve built it partially before or maybe you just haven’t used the bridge you once built and it requires some slight adjustments.

In any and all of those cases, know I am here to listen, to sit alongside you and together we have the passion and collective power to craft intentionally toward your most vivid, aligned with your vision future.

To request an appointment with me to talk, text or message about my programs and upcoming possibilities, please fill out the contact form on my website.

The world is waiting for your words: you are worth taking the time to gain clarity and get your voice on the page and into the world now.

Coming Up: 30 Days of Writing Passionately

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-mediaartist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming through the end of 2017.

Poetry: Love it, Hate it, Bored by It? Let’s play a free association game now —

April 21, 2017 by jjscreativelifemidwife Leave a Comment

When you see or hear “poetry”: what springs to your mind first? Read this essay to relate to poetry in a useful, reflective way.

I subscribe to a variety of writing websites, read writing instructional books regularly and attempt, always, to be at the forefront of thought around writing so that I may serve my students and workshop participants and coaching clients as well as I possibly can.

I also make it no secret that I am a poet and an actor.

Today I was reading one of my subscriptions, saw this and literally gasped aloud:

“Reading poetry often bothers people. Sometimes poetry feels lofty and pretentious and seems to say, “I know something you don’t know,” which is obnoxious, like an older sister taunting us.”

I was mortified.

“Reading poetry BOTHERS people? How can that be?!” I found myself taking this assertion personally. “How dare they think such a thing! They are missing the fabulousness that is poetry and anyone knows…” and then I thought back to the years when I wrote poetry and neglected to read poetry.

It is sort of like being a selfish-all-about-me person who enjoys other people’s company as long as the focus is solely on what they like and what they want and the conversation revolves around them.

Poetry isn’t like that. At. All. If poetry is a one way “I just write poetry” or “I abstain from all poetry” you are missing out on a huge area of growth as not only a writer or creative, you are shutting yourself off from the sheer pleasure of word play that comes with it.

What if a poem was an invitation?

My father was one of those who didn’t like poetry because he couldn’t “figure it out” and then I wrote a sonnet about hearing my grandather’s voice in a train whistle.

Suddenly poetry – according to my father especially poetry written by me – was enjoyable and easy to understand.

Let’s take a moment to free associatie – I will share three lines of poetry, one at a time.

When you read a line, jot notes of how you connect with those words.

“We have the town we call home wakening for dawn which isn’t here yet but is promised.”

Philip Levine

Make associations – what words do you connect with here? What do you see in your mind’s eye from this one line of poetry?

“The grass never sleeps”

Mary Oliver

Associations, please.

“I saw you in a dream last night –

Quiet and pale, but still my handsome cousin.”

Dana Gioia

Associate (Do you have a handsome cousin?)

“Time for gardening again; for poetry”

Margaret Atwood

More associations – play!

I just pulled random collections of poetry from my shelves, opened them, and wrote the first lines I saw. I didn’t have to hunt for inviting word sections or the easier to understand lines or the ‘dumbed down” versions.

See, what I love about poetry is the simplicity I find there, the purity and the relationship between me and the words and by association the poet. Three of the poets I chose are currently living, breathing this same air I breathe, standing on the same ground I stand upon albeit in different spaces. Phillip Levine died in 2015 in Fresno, California not far from where I live in Bakersfield. Have you been to Fresno? The most unpretentious people you have ever met live there.

Dana Gioia and I had a conversation in December but I doubt he remembers me. I became a fourteen-year-old girl holding a copy of a fan magazine when I spoke to him. Giddy, with rapid speech, nervous about my choice of outfit and wishing I had taken more time with my appearance when we spoke. He is the current poety laureate of the state of California and the word craft in his poetry makes me swoon.

There is a new television show starting based on one of Margaret Atwood’s books.

Mary Oliver is a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Philip Levine is also a Pultizer Prize Winner who chose to focus on the working class in his poetry and the place of his birth, Detroit, was one of his central inspirations.

I went back to the article that started this train of thought and discovered a shift there, as well.

“If we keep reading, poetry often moves us in ways a paragraph can’t. It requires a compression of language and meaning, tucked inside precise words that create concrete images. Poets, with a wink and a wry smile, trust us to read well.” Joe Bunting, TheWritePractice.com

Share in the comments what words you free associate with POETRY. Whatever you think or feel, let it drip onto the comments here. This is going to be fun. Let’s read your thoughts now –

Coming Up: 30 Days of Writing Passionately

Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!

To contact Julie to schedule a Writing or Creative Life Coaching Session, call or text her at 661.444.2735.

Check out the links in the margins above to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.