Hope's Spoon
Photo by Amy LV
(I will include audio for this poem as soon as my voice returns in full!)
Students - One of my New Year's resolutions is to do more exploratory writing in my notebook. This means that I plan to write more pages, even when I don't have any idea what I will write. The purpose of the writing has been and will be to discover what is rattling around my skeleton and head. What exactly am I thinking and wondering and hoping? So often we don't know this until we write it down. Donald Murray called such writing, "writing for surprise." For me, this feels like magic!
The best part of writing for surprise is when my mind makes a small leap into playfulness. This happened the other day as I looked around my desk for something to write about and found the small handmade spoon you see atop this post. Our daughter Hope whittled this spoon a couple of years ago at summer camp (see Ricardo demonstrate this at Hawk Circle Camp here), and she made the bowl part of the spoon (see how it is dark?) by placing a coal on the wood and letting it burn out that perfect curve.
I picked up the spoon, turned it around in my hands, and wrote. You will notice repetition of one of my favorite-sounds-in-the-alphabet - short i.
You might wish to try this technique for idea-finding. Just look around, pick something up, and go.
(Another one of my New Year's resolutions?....Learn to whittle!)
(Another one of my New Year's resolutions?....Learn to whittle!)
Tabatha is hosting today's Poetry Friday roundup over at The Opposite of Indifference. Visit there, and you will find links to many other blogs hosting poetry and poemlove today. For those of you who are new to Poetry Friday, all are always welcome and invited to travel around from blog to blog, making new poetry friends, commenting and adding your blog into the week's menu if you like. We are a happy band of poetry-celebrators, and we are glad that you are here!
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