Writing Activity: Compose a Villanelle

Attendance has been small recently, but the few of us who show up still play with language and still wish you were here...

This week's writing activity highlights a form of poetry that we have tried  each of the past few years: the villanelle. Here's a famous example by Elizabeth Bishop:

Read more about Elizabeth
Bishop on Wikipedia.

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Hide and Seek!

واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، اربعة، خمسة [1]

Eyes closed tight, face against a palm tree

حلال دم الغزال [2]

Footsteps I heard, running away.

Wings flapped above my head.

واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، اربعة، خمسة

I'll search the farm for siblings and cousins

A giggle here, a whisper there

حلال دم الغزال

Cracking of sticks behind a tanoor[3]

A rustle in the fields

واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، اربعة، خمسة

Footprints by the river

An impatient head sticking out of hiding

حلال دم الغزال

I'll find them all, as I always do.

Run to catch one, call out "you are it!"

واحد، اثنان، ثلاثة، اربعة، خمسة

حلال دم الغزال

---

[1] One, two, three, four, five.

[2] Ready or not, here I come.

[3] An oven for making bread made of clay.

We Could Have That Conversation (a villanelle)

We could have that conversation,
Three of us
In the afternoon silence

Waiting for more rain
At the end of the day.
We could have that conversation

Once upon a time,
That shaped our dreams
In the afternoon silence,

With what noise of a clock,
A footstep, a voice that said
We could have that conversation.

With what do we welcome
The eternity in not knowing?
In the afternoon silence

We didn't. We tried to.
We gathered together and laughed.
We could have that conversation
in the afternoon silence.

Writing Activity: I come from...

Last week, writers met and started with the phrase "I come from...." The challenge asks us to consider our influences, which is more than just a place. What made you? We all come from some place, but we come from much more than that, too!

I Come From...

by Haya Al-Mannai

I come from a family of 5 children,
with 3 brothers and a sister.
I may not be the eldest,
but I was the first to graduate high school.
I come from a house on a commercial street
in neighborhood with tall streetlamps and tiny roundabouts.
I come from a city called Doha,
where traffic either drives you crazy or kills you, literally.
I come from a country in the east,
where cultures and traditions matter more than anything.
I come from a planet called Earth,
like 7 billion others.
I come from the solar system.
I’m glad we have a sun;
otherwise, we’d be dead.

I Come from Superstition

How about that?

I come from a black cat
across your path,
a rusty horseshoe
nailed above the door,
salt over your shoulder.

I'm older than you,
Friday the 13th,
your birthday wish.

I come from a broken mirror
and a four-leaf clover,
cross my heart.
I'm over the moon about it.

I walked under a ladder.
What's the matter?

I come from a union of two
who stepped on cracks in sidewalks,
they were dreaming of fish
and someone was pregnant