If you wish to attend the April 2020 Friday read around(t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional)
Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email.

Register Here:

  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. Scroll down where you will find a selection of prompts

  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

My Thoughts

When I engage with the world metaphorically, everyday things around me, ordinary in my taken-for-granted world, become imbued with spirit. The bookshelf becomes my companion chattering of wonders, the Picasso printed mug becomes a well of inspiration from which I sip, the occasional crackling of the ice maker becomes a call to notice something hidden transforming in me. In this strange and extraordinary moment in history, confined to our houses, we have a chance to find a new intimacy with the life of things around us, the things we interact with everyday, things we barely notice in our taken-for-granted home unless they disappoint us by failing to work or getting in our way to somewhere else. But now that we have nowhere else to go, we can bring fresh eyes to the immediate world, the world that houses us while we sleep, that provides protection from sun and rain, and that we have decorated with a myriad of objects to fulfill our needs or please our whims.  This weeks prompt is to engage with the things around you metaphorically. 

The Patience of Ordinary Things
by Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and four square,
How the floor receives the bottom of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish, a
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

Pat Schneider, founder of Amherst Writers and Artists Website: https://patschneider.com/pat/

Prompt Menu

  1. Pick some ordinary thing or things in your house and engage with them metaphorically or soulfully. What might they be offering you? Personify one of them and have a dialogue with it.

  2. Identity a quality, state, or virtue (Schneider used patience; but it may be courage of compassion or grace, or…see the “7 Heavenly Virtues” or use the link link below the website Virtues For Life for ideas of Virtues) and notice what things in the world around you embody that quality or state.

  3. Free write from the stem: I am most intimate with life when…

  4. Flip the sentiment from the way Schneider presents it: In what way do the things in your world steal your energy or present shady aspects of life or the world or of yourself?

  5. In what way is a window generous? If a window is generous, what is a door? A wall? a stairway?

  6. Take some time to identify what it feels like to be in or at your home almost exclusively and free write form that experience or feeling.

  7. Pick a Virtue or quality and personify it; consider its “story,” what made it be that way. You can find examples of my own personification poems for Freedom; Trust, and Longing. See the button below for a few examples from my own collection.

  8. Write an ode to you house and how it holds you or what it is like to to be its occupant.

  9. Of course you can use anything else that inspires you to write. 

You can find a list of virtues a the virtues for life website:
Virtues For Life