how to be your own BFF

dress nice
take selfies
(multiple times a day, if possible)
write notes to yourself
leave them on your fridge
tweet pictures of your cat and like them
treat yourself to a daily treat
(something sweet)
make heart shapes with your hands
when you see something that makes you smile
tell jokes that only you laugh at

you know who loves you

Recipe

                                                    Love                                    Trust worthy 

       

                                                    Helpful                                Positive

                                                    Honesty                               Kindness 

                

                                                    Understandable                   Respect

Recipe

Put 1 cup of love, honesty, trustworthy in a bowl and mix them well. Pour 2 tsp of positive and understandable and keep stirring them with a bit of help from your friend and bake at 320° F. After that sprinkle it with some respect and serve it with kindness to your loved ones. 

Exquisite Corpse Poem

Last week we wrote an exquisite corpse poem. Each line had to contain one of the following words: crash, flower, canvas, snap, turn or sleep.

Noor Al Thani
SomayaDorzadeh
Bob Marcacci

silence crashed down around us
the flowers are colorful in the forest
like the colors used in a canvas
in a field of flowers
sometimes we have to turn back to make up things
like restoring an artwork or a blank canvas
whose turn was it? she thought
sleeping eight hours a day is what makes you fresh in the morning

*

I always draw nature on a canvas
to me it resembles sleep
we turn over in our sheets and dream
students sleep late every day to finish their homework
crashing instantly afterwards
a sleeping cat rushed out from under the table
drawing on canvas is what makes your art beautiful
it resembles flowers full of life and color

*

their stems snapped and left its part behind
we slept on the fragments
the driver crashed his car while driving
driving over the breathtaking flowers
I thought, "this would make a great snap" and took out my phone
I do not take snaps because I think it is a waste of time
it drives me away from sleep and ruins my eyes
snaps the cord and reminds me who I really am

Write a Villanelle

As it says in Wikipedia, "[a] villanelle...is a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets followed by a quatrain. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines." A villanelle should adhere to the following format in which capital letters represent the refrains and lower case letter represent rhymes.

A1
b
A2

a
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1

a
b
A2

a
b
A1
A2

The flowers are different and colourful.

The flowers are different and colourful.

The trees give fruit.

The trees are green.

There are so many things in nature.

The trees are huge.

The flowers are different and colourful.

The leaves of the trees are orange and yellow in autumn.

There are birds on top of the trees.

The trees are green.

The insects are everywhere.

There are so many animals.

The flowers are different and colourful.

The size of the trees are different.

The bears eat honey on the trees.

The trees are green.

There are small rivers.

There is green grass.

The flowers are different and colourful.

The trees are green. 

We walked on the sand and in the little water.

We walked on the sand and in the little water
The ocean left treasures at our feet.
Our footprints followed us up the beach

And we ran faster.
We stopped to look at a shell and a stone.
We walked on the sand and in the little water

We noticed little fishes and crabs
And all the underwater life and color.
Our footprints followed us up the beach

And we followed them back to the tide.
We were lost and we weren't.
We walked on the sand and in the little water

And in what was left of the sun
We thought we could see to the horizon.
Our footprints followed us up the beach.

We reached the top of a dune
And looked back.
We walked on the sand and in the little water
Our footprints followed us up the beach.

Make a List of Things in Your Room

For our first meeting, Creative Writing Club members wrote lists of things in our bedrooms as ways of introducing ourselves.

Eyman's list...

one white standing desk

one black table that is used as a desk
a leather chair
a laptop computer and a desktop computer
an orange table lamp
a small wooden jewelry box with little porcelain drawers
a pile of white cords
a rough rug
a king-size bed with a white bedspread and little blue and green flowers on it
a calendar of old Italian movie posters above the desk
a footstool with cushions
a red Chinese stuffed animal that looks like a cat, one head on both ends
a pile of books
an open magazine
a ceramic pencil cup that my son painted
two red shelves lined with books
some Italian textbooks
some English books
a desert rose
a mirror

My guitar leaning on my bed

by Al-Hanoof Mahzim

A piano that has been ignored for a year on top of my closet.
Books nearly organized in the bookshelf.
Samsung smart TV that keeps switching itself off whenever it feels like it.
My sister's messy bed that she scribbled all over.
Boxed slime everywhere from my siblings creations.
Abaya hanging on the door hook.
Messy closet.
Ice cold water by my bed.
Sports shoes on two shelves in the shoe closet, others on the lower shelves.

Writing Shapes

The Creative Writing Club members met today and, after a conversation about using Blogger to post our weekly responses, we got started.

We walked around the upper floor of the Learning Resource Center (LRC) and recorded different shapes that we observed. This is a found or conceptual writing technique that emphasizes a process through which imagery may be captured. It was an attempt to see the familiar from a different perspective.

The response pictured here shows Amera Jama's application of our writing activity.

a round wooden table

the reflection of the wooden table in the majlis window
a red circle around a door lock
concentric circles in grey and black on the floor
paper globes hanging by a string
a circular silver keyhole
the domed cylindrical trash can
a young man in a thobe turning half-circles back-and-forth in his chair
four people sitting around rectangular tables
the perfect circle of a black and white clock high on the wall
a cylindrical silver vacuum cleaner
the half moon wall of Lecture Hall C
a hole in the center
an aluminum dish
a marble oval coffee table
circular embroidery on a seat pillow
the letter 'O'
a ceiling lamp
the tiny holes of an intercom

Triolet

Last week, we practiced using a triolet, a French-based form utilizing an eight-line stanza and a rhyme scheme. The first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh lines, and the second line is repeated as the eighth line. Here's a sample by LuAnn Kennedy:

We Poets 

We poets are so very strange!
We write and write and lose our minds!
Emotions flow in quite a range;
We poets are so very strange!
We’re happy. Then, we quickly change;
To make a world it takes all kinds.
We poets are so very strange!
We write and write and lose our minds!

Try one of your own...

Life was beautiful back then...

Life was beautiful back then,
everything was so different.

Clear minds, pure hearts,
Life was beautiful back then...

Bigger pictures, fuller parts.
A connection like paper and pen.

Life was beautiful back then,
everything was so different.

Write What You Are...

The ABP Creative Writing Club is back in action!

For our first meeting, as a way to introduce ourselves, we wrote poems about what we are. I offer this possible interpretation by Juan Ramón Jiménez, translated by Robert Bly:

I Am Not I.
                    I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.

Feel free to join us every Wednesday after school in the English Room.

Middle

At the fire in everyone's presence

Sleepy, I hadn't brought sunglasses

I hadn't brought a letter, going into the library

A U, right? so who was U? I shook my head

A craze of tiny cracks rarely appeared before me

Coming in and doing more, I wondered why

He hadn't mentioned love again since he had given none

Better to hide your knowledge than show