There is something so energizing and inspiring about collaboration.
Having chosen an art form that is so often solitary, I love and appreciate any chance I get to work with others. The picture books I’ve co-authored with my pal Audrey Vernick have been some of my most fun to make. And the decade of shared prompts with my friends (here) have kept my fingers in poetry pie and a steadiness beneath my feet.
This month, we took our usual playful collaborative efforts a bit further by trying an exquisite corpse poem, wherein we each contributed a line to make a whole. There are lots of ways to play this sometime-parlor game, and ours went like this:
I started by penning a single line. There were no rules for mine, although I anchored it in February, this funny little slip of a month that is asked to do such heavy lifting.
I sent my line to Tanita, and she wrote a second line to follow mine. She then sent her line to Kelly, but didn’t include mine. When Kelly was done, she sent her line (without mine or Tanita’s) to Sara. And it went on like this, from Sara to Andi to Laura to Tricia to Mary Lee, with each new writer only seeing the line immediately preceding their turn. Nobody ever had a grasp on the big picture.
Nerve-wracking! Mysterious! Thrilling!
Finally, we came together via Zoom and put our lines together as an exquisite corpse first draft. It looked like this:
This month, odd one out, running short on days and sleep,
this month, past meets pride, roots ripped from native soil still somehow grow.
The once-bright future dims. Shadows grow
but there, near canyon rim, in broken light
the yearling hawk shrieked in futile fury
and the steel-edged clouds looked away.
Trees bow and bend on a blustery day
that rattles old oak leaves down the street.
We were surprised how imagistic it was! And how in many ways, it already kind of… worked. BUT, the fun had just begun, because then we granted each other permission to do with the draft whatever felt right, to cut and paste, to alter, to re-vision. Thus the eight very different poems we’re posting today.
Mine is quite transformed — lines edited and cut and moved about — but it’s still about February, about winter passing to spring, maybe, or a mother passing to a daughter, or the old, dark ways passing to the new. Your guess is as good as mine. Enough said, here goes:
Passing the Torch
Liz Garton Scanlon
This month (so short on days)
trees bow and bend,
the young hawk shrieks,
a once-bright future dims.
This month (as shadows grow)
when past meets pride,
uprooted lives branch out
in fury and in hymn.
This month (all bluster still)
dry leaves and steel-edged clouds
rattle and release themselves
into the light upon the canyon’s rim.
As for the others, go here to read:
Laura’s
Tanita’s
Andi’s
Sara’s
Mary Lee’s
Kelly’s
Tricia’s
And Poetry Friday is at our own dear Tricia’s this week!
OH — and if you’d like to join us next month, try writing an ekphrastic dodoitsu! Say what? Well, a dodoitsu inspired by an image — a painting, sculpture, photograph. And when you do, let us know about it with the tag #PoetryPals! Have fun!
