Leatha Kendrick has been a fixture of Lexington’s poetry scene for decades. She currently teaches workshops in poetry and life writing at the Carnegie Center. When I asked if she wanted to offer a writing prompt for the Accents Blog, I did not not anticipate such an intriguing response:
My favorite prompt (and one all my students know by now) is to draw your way into a poem. I particularly like to spend some time drawing a map of a place that’s important to me—even if I don’t think I remember the place very well. The point is not to create a great drawing but to reconnect with details that come to you as you try to draw the place.
I love those maps like the ones in Winnie the Pooh, where it’s an overhead shot of the place with the parts labeled (where Roo lives, scary hole, etc.). It’s important to spend some time actually drawing before you write—even if the drawing is a scribbled thing—and also to move straight from drawing to writing. I am nearly always surprised at what emerges.
Because of the uniqueness of this prompt, I can’t wait to see your creative responses. And since the prompt requires some drawing, I expect crazy pictures thrown into Instagram or Twitter. Go ahead and upload them to your favorite image hosting site, or even post it to the Accents Facebook page, and post a link in the comments. Or, if you’d rather not show your drawing, go ahead and post your poem!
Leatha Kendrick leads workshops in poetry and life writing at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, KY. Her fiction, poetry and essays appear widely in journals and anthologies – the result of years of toil and many more rejections than acceptances. Her latest volume of poetry, Second Opinion, is available from David Robert Books. She can also be found in Accents Publishing’s Bigger Than They Appear. (some text from Leatha’s LPM page)
my poetry advice: listen to leatha
Your prompt is fascinating. I can find no technical way to share my drawing. It is based on a recent trip I made to Eastern Kentucky (Pikeville KY), and I was trying to draw a map of Pikeville to “Fish trap” lake, in particular, the lake spillway which I visited with a friend. I was trying to find the area on Mapquest when I noticed something and this poem of 3 lines and 3 syllables per line capture that, in dense woods, the following stands out:
All roads lead
to rivers
and graveyards.
Now, as always, the decision of whether I should leave it be, or is there more to say? Would the poem be improved by additional lines, filling out, or would I lose the purity of the message by adding to the poem. Does the above poem say enough, does the idea stand out to the reader (the temporal life, the man made roads in service to the laws and landscape of nature, the road in service to death and the human need for water (life). I seldom have problems finding things to write about, I do however really battle the editing part!
Roger Conner
Roger, you poem is perfect as is. It goes where it is supposed to and leaves us where we don’t want to go. I really like the strict 3 syllable structure of it. Thanks for sharing.
Giving and following directions is a skill which demands an awareness of those maps our minds trace out by the Braille-touch to the landmarks of our pasts with the understandings of our present experience. Memory and imagination; those two paths that come together to become the creative force that guides us to find the destinations of our future in the fertile loam of the past.
Above is the mental map I drew in words. It doesn’t abide by the suggestion of drawing an actual, physical map, but I had not the technical ability to post that, so I settled for describing it in words then writing the following poem to it.
To the Game the Way Is Lost
By Steven Lindbergh
See it now, I can not
The way to the plum tree there
At the end of the drive near where
Lawn meets fence to lot
My eyes see those faces left
With eyes forever open to search
For the home they will never reach
As bullets took their breath
I lay to wait and play back
That tracing game was once enough
Of fun remembered as blind man’s bluff
This combat rest awaits attack
What is the way, to where I go?
A family reunion playing after dusk
Soldier uncles, brothers became dust
Going home the only way we know
712992 624333Some times its a pain within the ass to read what blog owners wrote but this website is really user pleasant! . 744166
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