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

You Are A Poet

You wake up one day 
and you are a poet. 

All that fomenting for years 
was dissolving the old self 

and growing wings of magnificence 
in a shell of beauty. You didn’t know, 

when you were painting the universe 
on the inside, that you would crack it open 

to write your own verse. You didn’t know, 
each time you pecked at those walls  

you were building your muscle 
to break out a stanza. Maybe, 

just before you woke, you said, in a dream, 
“no universe is too big for me.“ 

And then you hammered away 
until you came into the light. 

It was your Declaration of Independence, 
your merit of poetic license. 

Now when you celebrate your wrinkles 
in lines of sorrow and joy or when 

your heart melts at a kindness 
and you are gullible enough to believe 

it could change the world it means 
you have awakened. it means

You are a poet.

© 2022 Nick LeForce

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Next Read Around is January 7 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

I was casting around for a good poem, one about beginnings like John O’Donohue’s, For A New Beginning, to start the New Year when a friend of mine, who does not generally like poems and whom I asked to read my latest manuscript of poetry, Everything is Shouting, Wake Up, called with praise for the poem, You Are A Poet. It became my choice to ring in 2022 because it is a poem of rebirth. I no longer make targeted New Year's resolutions. Now I look to the year with a theme or general intention. My theme for 2022 is “life learning” (which is one answer to the question: how to be a lifelong learner?). Life Learning is learning from y the act of living. If this endeavor is a project, than the goal is to transform my self-evaluative inner commentary into a learning track. With that in mind, I sat down for my morning writing session on Sunday, January 2, 2022 with the open-ended prompt: What’s on Your mind? Here is what I composed:

Nowadays, I go around asking myself, “what did you learn from that?“ and trying to drop all my subterfuge, which is not easy after all the years of practice. And every time I succeed, I get closer to Normal. That’s a hard thing to say for an avowed misfit. But Normal is the animal I feed now because it is a workhorse. And I did a terrible job as the arbiter of everything my life. I never before believed that I could be ready for anything if I stopped trying to control everything.  So, here I am looking a gift horse in the mouth and I find a crystal ball where I see a flock of tomorrow’s that are miraculous in simplicity. I’ve already taken a full course in long-shots and the main thing is to love what you do. All of my failure’s flow out in tears when I see how close I am to my heart’s desire. And the only thing on my mind right now is how to land this beauty.

Keep your eyes out for my latest book of poetry, Everything is Shouting, Wake Up, to be released in March, 2022. https://www.nickleforce.com

Prompt Menu

  1. If you consider yourself a poet or storyteller, write about a moment or a time when you claimed this identity. Or describe your first steps into sharing your work. Or take the same idea and write about some other identity you have claimed for yourself in life

  2. Use the prompt, “All that fomenting for years was…” and write whatever comes to mind.

  3. Consider your inner world as a canvas and describe the universe you are painting on the inside.

  4. Journal or write about how you developed your own voice as a writer or storyteller. Consider how you orchestrate words together, how you mold them into a stanza, or how you show them on the page. Or you could riff about what makes a person a poet (aside from writing and reciting poetry).

  5. Use the statment “no universe is too big fom me” as your prompt; or, if you prefer, use the stem “No universe is…” or “No universe is too (x) for me…”

  6. Describe something you really had to work at to bring to light. What kept you hammering away at it?

  7. Journal or write a poem to “celebrate your wrinkles in lines of sorrow and joy.”

  8. Could kindness actually change the world (for the better)? If not kindness, what could change the world?

  9. As usual, write about anything else from the poem or life that inspires you