Parisian Phoenix Publishing

The Poetry in the Wild Project on Easton, Pa.’s Stirner Arts Trail has posted a poem by Nancy Scott, “I can’t write because…” as part of their June Strawberry Moon compilation online. Click here to see the current Strawberry Moon poems. The Poetry in the Wild project is seeking more poems, details on how to submit are on the web page. They will be hosting Second Saturday poetry readings on the trail beginning June 14.

Nan and I often talk about poetry and she serves as an editor here at Parisian Phoenix often helping me analyze poetry submissions. On a phone call this week, she recommended the book Poet X (by Elizabeth Acevedo) to me. The YA follows a dated diary format, where the entries are all presented as poetry.

Nan posed the question of whether writing an entry about the day in poetic form would make it easier to stick to a journaling routine. And so we decided to try it. On my birthday, I finished my Alphabooks K journal and started my L volume. And the L is rather daunting to write it and I find myself more prone to lists because of the shape.

The first day of the poetry exercise I wrote a long horrible poem at 11:55 p.m. and yesterday, the second day, I wrote two probably equally horrible shorter poems. I did find it easier to approach the page with distilling the themes of the day in my head before actually writing. It felt more artistic than “this is what happened today” type chronicling.

If you try it, let us know your experience.