Join us Thursday, September 24, from 6:30-8 p.m. at Neighbors Place Winery for an evening of poetry.

Join in person or online.
Part 1: Theme: In Their Voice
Part 2: Form: Blitz Poem
Part 3: Open, your choice

Remember, you can share an original or read a favorite that someone else wrote. OR, simply join by listening!

Theme:
Our theme is “In Their Voice,” and it’s a chance to write from inside someone else’s experience. Try to speak as a stranger, an ancestor, an animal, or the overlooked figure in a story everyone thinks they already know. Some poems will succeed at inhabiting another voice; others will discover, honestly, that they cannot, and that discovery belongs in the room too. 

Use any form of poetry.

Some ideas:

• A stranger you passed once and never stopped thinking about
• A family member whose interior life you can only guess at
• The overlooked figure in a familiar story — the villain, the bystander, the one who didn’t get a name
• An animal, an object, a place
• Someone whose experience you are certain you cannot fully imagine — and writing toward that anyway

Form:
Blitz Poem – Poetry Forms https://share.google/LZbyGDD0eCPnhdrEI
This is a tough one! Create your own or bring one that’s been published.

The Blitz Poem is a  stream of consciousness form invented by Robert Keim. As the name implies it is a rush of phrases and images with rapid repetition as if creating a sudden and intense attack on the senses.

It has a lot of rules that make it difficult but fun to write.
Here’s a sample.
Here are the rules, copied from here:

• Line 1 should be one short phrase or image (like “build a boat”)
• Line 2 should be another short phrase or image using the same first word as the first word in Line 1 (something like “build a house”)
• Lines 3 and 4 should be short phrases or images using the last word of Line 2 as their first words (so Line 3 might be “house for sale” and Line 4 might be “house for rent”)
• Lines 5 and 6 should be short phrases or images using the last word of Line 4 as their first words, and so on until you’ve made it through 48 lines
• Line 49 should be the last word of Line 48
• Line 50 should be the last word of Line 47
• The title of the poem should be three words long and follow this format: (first word of Line 3) (preposition or conjunction) (first word of line 47)
• There should be no punctuation

Enjoy!

Part 3: Open, your choice
Other than a time limit of around 3 minutes, this is wide open.

• a whole other type of poem
• part of a chapter of a book you’re writing
• lyrics for a song
• ??

As always, looking forward to everyone’s thoughts and selections!

~ Michelle
michelle@michellehaynes.com

While it is free to attend, we do strongly prefer that you register so we can adequately prepare the space for the event. Also, in the event of a last minute cancellation, we will know to contact you directly to let you know. Click the button(s) on this page, which correspond to the date you are planning on attending.