Look Around & Choose an Object

Garden Watering Time

Video by Amy LV

Hello Friends! First I would like to thank the community of Ripley Central School (Grades K-6), in New York State, for spending Wednesday with me. It was such a treat to begin these autumn days with thoughtful writers and teachers. I look forward to our future time together, and today's poem came from something I shared in our upper grade assemblies.

One of the most meaningful, interesting, and important parts of being a writer, whether we share our writing or not, is deciding what to write about...choosing an idea. And sometimes we can fall into the trap of believing that we need to have a GOOD idea, an IMPORTANT idea, a SPECIAL idea. But we do not need this at all. We just need to begin writing.

We can begin by starting down one of many possible paths, but one of these paths is simply the path of observation. We look around. We look at one object. We write about this object. Now, you may be wondering, Just what might we write about any object? Well, we can write in any genre, and we might:

• Describe the object with our senses
• Compare the object with something else in the world
• Tell about a personal memory related to this object
• Teach something about this object
• Share beliefs connected to this object
• List words this object brings to our minds and write from these
• Invent the beginning of a story inspired by this object
• Begin a poem about this object

For me, the best part of writing is the surprise part. I like beginning NOT KNOWING what I will write, NOT having a great idea to begin, but rather, allowing an idea to show up on the page like a surprise guest.

As for my poem today, I was trying to think of a writing idea when I realized that I should water the garden. As I did so, I admired the sprinkler and so...the sprinkler became my main character of today.

This poem is short and it does not rhyme. However, it does use a lot of sound repetition, namely of the short i sound. The poem, including title, has 20 words, and 10 of them include the short i sound, my favorite sound in the English language.

I would love to read and share any poems you write from just looking around, choosing an object, and allowing the object to bring you to new places, thoughts, and wordplay.

Linda is hosting this week's Poetry Friday roundup over at Teacher Dance. Each Friday, all are invited to share poems, poem books, poetry ideas, and friendship in this open and welcoming poetry community.

xo,

Amy

ps - For those of you who, like me, are fans of English Professor and Musician Gart Westerhout, he is back with another song version of one of my poems, "Summer Mystery," from two weeks ago. Hear him sing that poem about my generous neighbors here.

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