10 Poems, 10 Days – Ready?

Companion. What a great word.

Companion:

A: a person or animal with whom one spends a lot of time or with whom one travels.

B: one of a pair of things intended to complement or match each other.

I was thinking about this word this morning,  and also considering writing practices. I began to envision a cool, writing activity that pairs companion with poetry.  What if we took a poem and spent some time with it, and then wrote our own poem intended to complement it?

If you like poems, and want to challenge yourself to write more of them I invite you to join in me, or should I say, to accompany me on a little writing adventure;)

The Companion Poetry Challenge / 10 Days, 10 Poems

Here’s how to play.  

Commit to writing ten poems – One a day for ten days.
Consider now what time of day this might work well  in your life’s busy schedule. I’m finding mornings are my best time for writing. But some of you may be night owls, and owls always have great perceiving abilities.
Speaking of perceiving. This is meant to be a perceptive exercise. Don’t overthink it. We can edit the poems later. For now, let’s just get them in rough form onto the page. Use sensory language as much as possible.
Okay, let’s try the first one.
Start by finding a poem you  like. Today, I picked one by poet Ocean Vuong called “Torso of Air”.
Find a quiet place. Here’s where we will read and write. It doesn’t need to be the same place every day. It should just be a place where we can feel quiet, focused and attentive to the poems and to ourselves.
Here’s the first part of the exercise.  Spend five minutes reading the poem you chose aloud. This reading is the companion component to the exercise. The poem you chose will be accompanying you as you write your own poem. Also, while reading the poem, try reading slow and steady. Like we might try reading if we were at a poetry reading. And, speaking of poetry readings. Go ahead and imagine you’re wearing a little beret.  Or a suit. Or whatever your imaginary, child-like self would wear to read poetry. I have a bolo-tie necklace made of dolphin bone at my imaginary reading. And a simple black dress.
Okay, now that we’ve finished assembling our outfits and offering our reading to ourselves__Let’s Dig In and Write!
10 minutes. And let’s see  if we can channel the inspiration we felt, our love for the other poem into our poem. Also, try to avoid trying to copying the other poem. It’s more of a dialogue between two poems.
Ready? Set? Go! Oh, and if you want to post your poem, this is a cool platform to share them on. To share, go to: www.elephantjournal/write-now/

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