This Month is the Sealey Challenge

Hi all, I am in such a weird headspace that weeks passed before I remembered that August is the Sealey Challenge. Usually I do not complete the challenge but do push myself to read more poetry books than usual.

While it may be too late to catch up to earn the prize, August is a great month to get reading recommendations for later and to promote your favorite books and poets on social media. Don’t forget to check out the Sealey Challenge website and check out the books of the challenger’s founder—Nicole Sealey. I loved ordinary beast and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Were Named. I haven’t read her latest, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure but plan to.

It is inspiring to know that so many great poets are out there writing and eager to share their favorite collections. Promoting your favorites is a great way to give back to the community. Here is a poet who always promotes and encourages others. To read more of his review, click here and check out Adrian’s own books and events on his site.

Have fun reading!

Sealey Challenge—with Prompts

So at least I am reading more than previous, but definitely not every day. How are you all doing on the challenge? I hope better than I have!

Even though I haven’t read as much as intended, I at least have read excellent books. Kelly Gray’s Instructions for an Animal Body is wonderful, filling my head with dripping moss, the shadows of wings, and transformation. I particularly loved “The Fox as Form.” Another of the poems from the collection, “When the Shooter Comes: Instructions for My Daughter,” was used as inspiration for the workshop I attend. It is powerful.

It was of course difficult to choose just one poem, and I realize now that “The Season of Motherhood” is a little less surreal and dark than most in the book, but I am missing my daughter, so this one called to me.

For the first prompt, describe two people in relationship antonyms—perhaps of seasons as shown here. Notice how the daughter is “Spring,” movement, sky, and brightness whereas the narrator describes herself as “Winter,” “stillness,” and earth. Binary oppositions have long been used in poetry, but focus on where the opposites meet and what pulls them together.

For the next prompt use the line “We intersect where the long grass is ice flat” as a ghostline. Go from there. Remember to erase the line and credit the poet for your inspiration.

The last prompt is a Mad Libs writing exercise. Take the poem’s structure but replace all of the nouns and action verbs with your own. See what happens. Perhaps a line you’ve recreated will inspire a poem of your own.

Good luck reading and writing!

Sealey Challenge Update—with Prompts

Although I had read Anna Ross’s Figuring last week (and have had it on my to-read shelf for years) and really enjoyed it, I am only now posting. Last week was a rough one.

The poems in this chapbook are titled in variations of “Self-Portrait” or “Report” and interweave themes of motherhood and nature and the brutality in each.

Although it was difficult to choose just one poem, I love the juxtaposition of the mundane and the surreal in “Self-Portrait with Catastrophe.”

For the first prompt, write a list poem of grocery items paired with abstractions. Like the “sour milk for memory,” give the abstract a taste and smell. What do you need? What won’t you be able to find? How much are you willing to pay?

For the second prompt, use the line “People are fleeing the aisle of unsent letters” for a ghostline. See what happens. After you’ve finished, remember to erase the line and credit the poet for your inspiration.

For the last prompt, write your own poem with the title of “Self-Portrait as Catastrophe” and again make sure to credit Ross.

Good luck writing and reading!

Sealey Challenge Update—And Prompts

I had heard Kathryn de Lancellotti read many of these poems at her book launch and immediately ordered the book—but had misplaced the entire shipment. I heartily recommend this book to everyone. You can purchase from the publisher here (full disclosure: many of my friends are involved with Moon Tide Press, and I have had poems published in its anthologies).

It was incredibly difficult to choose which poem to select for prompts, but I could not resist the beautiful language and imagery of “These Walls.”

For the first prompt, take the line “I would have never seen if not for the” and fill in your own image to use as a first line. See where you go from there.

For the second prompt, write a poem about advice you were given and what you did instead.

For the last prompt, begin a list of every medicine, self-medication, escapism or addition you’ve tried and where you are now.

Good luck writing and reading!

Sealey Challenge Update—with Prompts

I again finished a chapbook that has been in an unread pile for years—this time Kim Bridgford’s Doll, which uses traditional forms such sonnets and villanelles to explore society’s expectations of women.

Although I believe the submission window is closed now, you can subscribe to Duotrope to find out more about the the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Contest (I do not have a membership since I do not submit often enough to justify the expense, but you should try to submit more than I—everyone should).

My favorite poem in the collection is “Barbie Turns Fifty-Three,” perhaps because I can sympathize with an aging Barbie whose feet do not easily fit into heels (if ever mine did) and whose hopes for a future have turned to rearview mirror regrets.

For the first prompt, give a doll or action figure an age and use both the toy’s name and the age (e.g. “Tenderheart Bear Turns 37”) for your as Bridgford did. You will probably want to state “after Kim Bridgford” below the title. Try to write a sonnet if possible.

For the next prompt, use the line “And what is this new sorrow, and this ache?” for a ghostline. Remember to erase the line and credit the poet.

For the final prompt, write a poem about whom you believe the world is designed for. Examine the ways you are not that person.

Good luck and good reading!

Sealey Challenge Update—with Prompts

So this month has not gone as planned. I have finished only two books so far, but the month isn’t over.

Beneath the Ice Fish Like Souls Look Alike by Emilia Phillips is a book I’ve had for a long time (in that stack of unread books), and the whole structure and intertwined connections are fascinating.

As you can see below, there is no title. Each page consists of a few lines, and the objects are treated as characters, holding agency and often reappear throughout. For example, a metal chair “shrinks further / into itself” and later “offers a seat to the shadow.”

For the first prompt, make a list of five objects and a second list of five actions/emotions. See what connections you can make between the lists. Or cut each list into single items and place items from each list into separate hats, drawing randomly.

Push yourself to create characters out of a single object or challenge yourself to use all five objects in one poem or a poem divided into sections. See what happens.

For the next prompt, use the first lines, “In the abandoned / house, the floorboards crowd / like teeth” as a ghostline. Remember to erase the line and credit the poet for your inspiration.

For the last prompt—again simply a writing exercise—take these lines and Mad Lib them, replacing the nouns and verbs with your own. Then if something sparks for you, take one of these recreated lines and use that for either your first line or your last.

Have fun reading and writing!

Sealey Challenge Update!—and Prompts

I am back in California from Mississippi. Obviously behind on the challenge, I did finish my first book: Terri Niccum’s The Knife Thrower’s Daughter published by Moon Tide Press. Terri is in the same workshop I’m in, and I enjoy the generosity of her perspective demonstrated in her comments there and in the worlds she creates in her poems.

One of my favorite poems in the book is “What She Told the River.” I love the imagery and the sound of the language.

For the first prompt, address an aspect of nature in a series of requests: the ocean, a stone within a river’s current, a tree clinging to a cliff side, a half-blown dandelion. Make a list of possible objects—living or not—and create a second list of qualities: resiliency, longevity, belonging, etc. Mix and match the answers. Or take one object/phenomenon and write a poem requesting a particular quality you wish to embody as it does.

For a second prompt, use the line “Make my journey a wet undoing” as a ghostline and go from there. Remember to erase the line and credit Terri with the inspiration.

For a writing exercise prompt, take the poem and use antonyms for the nouns and/or verbs. See what happens. Because the structure will be too similar to the original, this is just a writing exercise.

Have fun reading and writing this month!