Words That Sing and Soar

Wednesday evening I attended Georgia Heard's webinar "Word's that Sing and Soar," with Irene Latham. How wonderful it was to gather virtually with so many poets I have gotten to know through Boyds Mills(Highlights). Really looking forward to going to Poetry Palooza there this fall and catching up with them.

Be sure to sign up for these little ditties! They are both a little bit of poetry love, filled with great tips and news about upcoming webinars.

Georgia Heard's Newsletter: Heartbeats

Irene Latham's YouTube channel with Tuesday's 2-minute Writing Tips

I thought this Poetry Friday I would share a couple of word-play prompts that I found really helpful.

We were given a list of words to choose from—basic words like: enough, still, almost etc. and asked to write a brief poem about that word. I chose the word almost. I liked it because it combined "all" with "most." After a couple of minutes of thinking, I wrote this poem inspired by my husband, who has been fighting cancer for 5 years now.

Next was the 5-word challenge. Georgia selected 5 random words and asked us to write a poem. It was a great idea and so interesting to see how each person interpreted the words. I will definitely try this again.

The words were : Moss, Hum Indigo, Hour, Hem.

Here's my poem.

Irene Latham introduced me to a word I had not heard of:

Portmanteau:

-a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two others.

For example:

Motel: (from ‘motor’ and ‘hotel’)

Brunch: (from ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’).

Skort: (skirt and shorts)

What fun this tool could be! She gave us permission to be silly and make up words. This reminded me of when I write double dactyls. The first line is always two made-up words.

Here is one I wrote about Johann Sebastian Bach. Made-up words are so fun to say!

May your week be filled with words that make your heart sing!

Hope to share some more color-inspired poems next Friday.

Thanks to Molly Hogan at https://nixthecomfortzone.com/. for hosting this week. She also attended Georgia's webinar. Molly's poem inspired by the word, "still" is lovely. Hope you will pick a word and see where it leads you!