Court And Capture Ideas

by

Mona Hodgson

 

If you don't already have a poetry notebook, now’s the time to start one. Carry it with you and record images, sounds, smells, phrases, descriptions, emotions—any snippets of ideas. Though the conditions for growth may not be right at the moment, looking through your notebook at a later time may spark new ideas that eventually lead to completed poems.

 

A sensitive spirit can find poetry wherever he or she looks, listens, smells, tastes, and feels. Subjects for poems are seen through the eyes of joy, grief, victory, loss, triumph, failure, fear, faith .... You get the idea. Ideas sprout and can be harvested from our everyday life and living. Let's look at some of the garden centers that carry the seeds for our poems.   

 

Personal Experiences

 

Answering a few questions can plant new seeds for poetic expression.

Ø      What is the make-up of your family?

Ø      Are you married, single, widowed, divorced?

Ø      Do you have teenagers, married children, handicapped children, preschoolers, grandchildren?

List the particulars of your current and past family situations and experiences. The subject matter itself may suggest a market. Is your topic appropriate for a  single-parenting magazine? A magazine for senior adults? A magazine for teenagers?

 

Here's one of my poems written from my empty nest experience.

 

   A CURRENT ALL HER OWN

 

Realigning her too spacious

nest, the sparrow sifts molting shed

in her offsprings’ adolescence.

 

Memories lifted by changing     

currents drift to the surface.

With her breath caught in a warning

 

warble, she watched her young test

their wings. One by one the fledglings

fluttered to the nest’s edge. Looking

out, looking back, looking up, each

one flapped wings she had once groomed. Where

would the current take them? Would they

 

soar? Would they find their way? Like the

down they left behind, questions

swirled about her.

 

Fanning her own feathers long

forgotten, the sparrow perches

at the nest’s edge. Looking out, she

 

flutters, flaps the wings her

fledglings groomed, and soars

on changing currents. MH

                       

                       

Knowledge

 

Again, making a list can germinate poem and market ideas.

 

Ø      What do you know about?

Ø      What is your profession?

Ø      Your hobbies?

Ø      Your activities?

Ø      What ministries are you involved in?  

 

Include the aspects, attitudes, perks, and challenges involved. Might your topic and slant be appropriate for a trade, computer, ministry magazine or newsletter?

 

Relationships

 

Think about the people in your life and list your various relationships.

Ø      Family (include immediate, extended, and distant relatives)

Ø      Friends

Ø      Co-workers

Ø      Neighbors 

 

Highlight five of the most compelling ones and see they might seed poem ideas. After journaling about the experience of a teenage girl who spent a year and a half with us, I mingled it with the memory of my own experience and wrote Ritual, first published in Campus Life magazine as Anticipation.

 

                                           RITUAL

 

Phone-sitting,

            prying mirrors,

                        incessant primping,

                                    sweating palms,

                                    lumping throats,

                                    silence,

                                    simultaneous chatter -

a first date. MH

 

 

Observations

 

In an article for Writers' Digest John Brady wrote, "Ideas are in the air. If you are a writer, you see and find them everywhere."   

 

Look around you. What do you see? A photograph, a butterfly, a road sign, a tennis shoe, a leash? What captured your attention?

 

Focus on that one thing or creature and have some creative fun brainstorming. Write down any words or phrases that come to mind in association with that object. Let the ideas flow. No editing during this inventive phase of writing.    

 

After watching tumbleweeds scurry across the highway, I parked my Jeep on the side of the road and made this list: golden, brittle, stickery, thorny, prickly, bristly, scurry, transient, racing, asphalt, dodging cars, blazing a trail, and chasing each-other. Here's how I put it together.                       

 

TUMBLEWEEDS 

 

                                                         Stickery, tangled

                                                      tumbleweeds pursue

                                                  one another, blaze a trail,

                                                               tumbling

                                                                 toward

                                                       who knows where. MH

 

Even if you don't write a poem immediately, you've captured the moment on paper or on a voice recorder.

 

Spiritual Life 

 

Many of my poems come out of my relationship and experiences with God. Here’s an example of one of mine, first published in Decision Magazine.

 

BREAKTHROUGH

God breaks through

chaos,

cries,

chatter

not with fiery condemnation or

condescending concern

                                                but with a whisper –

  I care.

                                      I love you.

                                      Come away,

spend time with me.

                                                Replacing

chaos with gentleness,

cries with comfort,

chatter with communion

He speaks peace. MH

 

 

Conversations

 

Hearing about your child's day at school, your wife's workday, or your friend's struggle with weight loss can provide you with material. Airports, malls, restaurants, parks, beauty shops, and zoos are great places to listen to people and take notes (discreetly, of course). Also, consider your own conversations as a source for poem ideas. Walls, first printed in Living with Teenager, came out of an argument in which I participated.

 

WALLS

 

In anger’s fury,

harsh words stack

like a concrete mass.

 

Communication cowers behind

the forbidding wall

of my pride.  MH

 

Media            

           

Don’t overlook an idea planted by a newspaper headline, an article or advertisement, a newscast, a radio program or commercial, a talk show, or a situation comedy.

 

Take a closer look the next time you see a hummingbird stake out its feeder. Pay more attention the next time you hear a child pour her heart out to her Cocker Spaniel puppy. Be aware the next time you feel, smell, taste, touch, see, hear--anything.

 

Contemporary poet Patti Polk‑Hudson said, "Discovering praise and splendor of life, no matter now small it may appear on the surface, is the gateway to writing priceless poetry."