1. Read the poem 

2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

4. Use the selection of prompts below the poem

5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

The Art Room

For my sisters

Because we did not have threads 
of turquoise, silver, and gold, 
we could not sew a sun nor Sky. 
And our hands became balls of fire. 
And our arms spread open like wings.

Because we had no chalk pastels, 
no toad, forest, or morning-grass slats 
of paper, we had no color 
for creatures. So We squatted 
and sprang, squatted and sprang.

Four young girls, plaits heavy 
on our backs, our feet were beating 
drums, drawing rhythms from the floor; 
our mouths became woodwinds; 
our tongues touched teeth and were reeds.

—by Shara McCallum
https://sharamccallum.com

Note: Next Read Around is:
March 19, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

The Art Room by Shara McCallum celebrates the triumph of childhood imagination. The poet describes how she and her sisters made up for the lack of art room supplies through creative engagement with life. McCallum goes a step farther and attributes their creative activity to the impoverished condition. She describes how they immersed themselves in the imaginal. They may not have had the materials to stitch images of sun and sky, but they embodied it and became sun and sky. I suspect that is one of the fundamental differences between childhood imagination and adult imagination: children embody the imaginal. Children learn through play and by a kind of osmosis from imaginal acts of becoming some person or thing in fantasy. As adults, we rarely immerse ourselves so fully in the imaginal. 

The three stanzas of this short poem subtly convey the idea that you can be anything. This is a hopeful message to anyone, but even more so to those who live in impoverished conditions as implied by the lack of supplies in the art room. What if you could turn lack into joyful immersion in life? This is one of those poems that I want to fold up and put in my pocket so that I can pull it out to read it over and over.  The next time you find your senses dulled or you feel lacking, immerse yourself in the land of the imaginal and be anything you choose to be.

Prompt Menu

1. It’s Women’s History Month. Write a poem dedicated to your sister(s), either by blood or to a women or group of women you consider to be like sisters. Or consider writing a tribute to a woman (either someone you know, or a woman from herstory, or a female characer from fiction) who greatly influenced you on your journey.

2. Did you have an art room in grade school? Recall your experience with art (whatever the media— drawing, painting, music, dance, etc.). Was your creativity encouraged? Discouraged? Ignored? How has that creative outlet played out in your life since then?

3. What is your relationship to fantasy and imagination? Do you daydream? Many people think day dreaming in adults is a distraction, a way of escaping reality and living in a dream world? Do you think fantasizing in general is OK? Do you give yourself permission to day dream?

4. Write about a time, either as a child or an adult, when you trasncended circumstances. Think of something you did not have as a child and write about how you over came it. For instance, we could not afford a real skateboard when I was youg, but I found a way to modify an old pair of skates and mount it to a board. Think of a time when you made do with what you had in some creative way that overcame circumstances.

5. As adults, many of us use our imagination negatively in the form of worry by running negative “what if” scenarios and then trying to solve future imagined problems with today’s information. Write about a worry by letting your imagination run to extremes—go to the worst of worse outcomes. Contrast that with best of best outcomes if you rose to the occasion and luck was on your side: give yourself permission to go to outrageously wonderful possibilities.

6. Take some lack in life or some challlenge and imagine becoming an animal or an aspect of nature. Then write how that perspective changes the relationship to the lack or issue. Or conversely, write about a time when you were joyfully immersed in life and other concerns simply did not matter.

7. What was your favorite childhood fantasy? For instance, I loved to play secret agent as a child. Go back and immerse yourself in the fantasy again and wirte a poem about that experience.

8. Take your fantasy from #7 and describe how you live that role or situation out in your current life. For instance, I think I am a “secret agent” because I help people to manage thier inner worlds or become a kind of secret agent of their own lives.

9. As always, you can write from something else that inspires you in the poem or from anywhere else in life.