Floundering - A Poem from Words Unknown

Here from this valueless life I have fled

And now, I find myself lost

There are places to go and pad around

Scary places but there is no room

With only my hands and feet,

And all of myself, I go, blown by the wind

There are several paths and tunnels to take

But nothing makes sense to me

The god or God, where are you?

You are like a wind, I cannot see

My only choice is to lie down in the grass

Pleading for you to find me, this one time I ask.

Precious Linda, c. 2013

The poetry prompt for Day 16 of the National Poetry Writing Month was to take an international poem, in a language not known to me, and use the words and shapes of the words to write my own poem, without looking at the translation. The above is my attempt at doing so. I knew the original poem was entitled, “Escape,” and I wrote without reading the translation.

The original poem and the translation, provided with credits to the author and translator, are listed below:

ONTVLUGTING

Uit hierdie Valkenburg het ek ontvlug
en dink my nou in Gordonsbaai terug:

Ek speel met paddavisse in 'n stroom
en kerf swastikas in 'n rooikransboom

Ek is die hond wat op die strande draf
en dom-allenig teen die aandwind blaf

Ek is die seevoël wat verhongerd daal
en dooie nagte opdis as 'n maal

Die god wat jou geskep het uit die wind
sodat my smart in jou volmaaktheid vind:

My lyk lê uitgespoel in wier en gras
op al die plekke waar ons eenmaal was.

© 1956, Ingrid Jonker Trust
From: Ontvlugting
Publisher: Culemborg, Cape Town, 1956

ESCAPE

From this Valkenburg have I run away
and in my thoughts return to Gordon’s Bay:

I play with tadpoles swimming free
carve swastikas in a red-krantz tree

I am the dog that slinks from beach to beach
barks dumb-alone against the evening breeze

I am the gull that swoops in famished flights
to serve up meals of long-dead nights

The god who shaped you from the wind and dew
to find fulfilment of my pain in you:

Washed out my body lies in weed and grass
in all the places where we once did pass.

© Translation: 2007, Antjie Krog & André Brink
From: Black Butterflies
Publisher: Human & Rousseau, Cape Town, 2007, 9780798148924

http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poem/item/11227

Ideas to Consider as the Beginning Day of 30 Poems in 30 Days Approaches

As April 1st approaches and so also NaPoWriMo - National Poetry Writing Month - April 2013, with the goal of writing 30 poems in 30 days, I'd like to share a couple other links that I found helpful.

First, Poetic Forms and Techniques, provides descriptions and examples of 34 types of poems. I thought of using one per day, as a way to stretch my thinking and writing skills. You can find this page at: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/197.

Another site that I found helpful has writing prompts for poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. You can find this page at: http://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises and sign up for weekly prompts to be sent via e-mail.

I began reading a book, Finding What You Didn't Lose by John Fox, who says, "Poetry is within each of us. It's there waiting for you to find what you never really lost." (p. xv) I'll see if I can "find it" during the month of April 2013.

Whether you participate in the National Poetry Writing Month this April, formally or informally, or not, I hope you and I can enjoy the daily prompts sent by www.naporimo.net, or from other sources, and even from within our hearts and spirits and be encouraged to explore our creativity through writing.

Happy Writing and Creating!!

Ideas for Poems from Dr. T.

As I anticipate writing a poem a day during the month of April, I was happy to come across a site that gives 100 ideas for poems: http://www.dmturner.org/English/Writing/poemideas.htm. Perhaps others who plan to participate in this event will also find some of these ideas helpful. These prompts could also be used for future writings, even after the end of the upcoming event.

The first 25 ideas include:

Ideas for Poems

You can write a poem:

1. Describing a person by describing his or her belongings.
2. Speaking from the point of view of something you lost or misplaced.
3. In the shape of its subject (a concrete poem)
4. Telling about something that happened long ago, to you or to someone else.
5. As a conversation between two people, objects, ideas, or animals.
6. Defining words in strange and new ways
7. About something in the news.
8. As dialogue in a play
9. With assonance (repeating the same vowel sounds)
10. Using alliteration (repeating the same consonant sound)
11. About noisy things in words that sound like the noises they make.
12. In one loooooong sentence.
13. About your favorite sport
14. Pretending you are somebody else.
15. With the title acting as the first line of the poem.
16. Explaining what it's like to wake up in the morning, using sounds.
17. Imitating a poet or a poem you like.
18. Describing a person by describing his actions, using strong verbs
19. As an acrostic, using unexpected ideas. Mix long and short lines. Use your own name. Use a series of words. Put the acrostic word in the middle of the poem instead of at the beginning.
20. About a feeling, using color, shape, texture and size adjectives.
21. Repeating things you've overheard in the halls, fragments of conversation and statements
22. In stanzas with the rhyme scheme abba, cddc, and so on.
23. Using words from an entry in your classroom journal
24. Telling what a place will look like in a hundred years, or what it looked like a century ago.
25. Saying exactly the same thing over and over in completely different ways.

The above ideas are from:  http://www.dmturner.org/English/Writing/poemideas.htm.