four words and a quote
When I started writing with
intention, I would go to a café in Berkeley on a Saturday morning for two
hours. I would take my notebook and some books that were in play for me, by
writers like Kathleen Fraser. I was still living with my then husband but
falling deeply in love with my poetry teacher. I would drink a little coffee,
swim around in the books, and then, filled up with language, do what I called
“dipping the bucket”, which was writing whatever showed up for me for about
twenty minutes. Even though I called it “dipping the bucket”, my mental image
was more like casting and hauling in a big net of silvery fish. Then I would
sort through the fish and make some poems. These I would “type up”, often at
work on Monday, and take into the poetry workshop.
Now I have lived in Barcelona for
many years with my poetry teacher, who is also my favorite poet, Edward
Smallfield. He invented a writing prompt that has served me unfailingly for the
last 24 years. It consists of a personalized postcard with four words and a
quote. He used to pass these out in workshops, and then everyone would write
for 15 minutes, with the option to read our pieces aloud if we were so
inclined. The writing that came out of this exercise was often astonishing, and
sometimes led to book-length projects.
We continue with our postcards every
week, in our private two-person Sunday workshop and in the four-person workshop
we have with our friends and parentheses co-editors.
We also use it, among other prompts, in the generative monthly workshop we
teach, and it tends to be everyone’s favorite.
So, a poem often starts for me with a
postcard. It might seem to be the image that sparks something, or the
words/quote, but my sense is that it’s really the tension between the elements
that makes something happen. Sometimes even the postcard fine print is
important. Sometimes I use all the words, sometimes none of them. Whatever
happens, though, feels like it couldn’t have happened if I’d simply sat down to
write.
Here’s an example from our Sunday
workshop on August 2nd. The
postcard was of a woodcut by José Guadalupe Posada titled “Gran Fandango y
Francachela de todas las Calaveras” The words were: sweet, battle, smoke and
clatter. The quote was “we’re all dead men conversing with dead men”. Here’s
the first poem that came from this:
el
día de los muertos
the
sea is not our home
someone sang
a
floor of monsters
in
the mind
something
speckled, adrift
spine
without body
swimming
to nowhere
in
our world
there
is one bat
maybe
two
small
leather hunters
in
the air between
us
& everyone else
you
have written of sweet wine
&
the dead
those
sugar skulls for sale
terra nova
As I’d been inspired mainly by the
image up to this point, I decided to make another pass, trying to use all the
words this time:
sweet
in
the battle
to
remain ourselves
smoke
sink
clatter
skateboards
dogs
our
neighbourhood bat
&
the voices
of
our bones
So, what happens to these “postcard
poems”? Sometimes they’re stand-alone pieces, sometimes the beginning of a
conscious series, and sometimes the beginning of an unconscious series whose
pattern and coherence emerge over time. Lately I’m aware of new strands coming
into my poems, different voices, memories, dreams and fears. I notice once
again that whatever the prompt, the work is always my work, a product of
whatever is under the surface waiting to be brought to shore.
Valerie Coulton’s books include small bed & field guide
(above/ground press), open book (Apogee
Press), and The Cellar Dreamer
(Apogee Press). With husband Edward Smallfield, she’s the co-author of lirio and anonymous, both from Dancing Girl Press. She lives in Barcelona and
co-edits parentheses, an annual
journal of international writing.
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