Writing Prompt Wednesday: For the Roses

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Writing from Art, Part One

Bikes on a Florence, Italy Street.  Image © Lori Gravley

 I wrote a chapbook last year inspired by the photographs of the great and prolific American photographer Elliot Erwitt.  I love writing from photography.  I also love writing from art, and I have  collection of postcards of art I love on my desk to inspire me if I'm feeling uninspired. Someone asked me recently how I do it.  How do I take a static two-dimensional image and bring it to life?

It was a good question.  I've been writing ekphrastic poetry (poetry inspired by art) for as long as I can remember.  And my ekphrastic poems are frequently accepted for publication.  I've noticed that there are a number of ekphrastic challenges posted online.  Poetry Magazine recently published a beautiful section of art and poetry inspired by art honoring Latino/a artists and poets.  But not everyone knows how to start writing in response to art.  

So, here are some thoughts on my process. 

First,  I enter the scene.  Even if I've never been there or if it's from something in the past, I try to imagine the sounds, smells, and tastes I would encounter.  The sights and textures are already there.  In the picture above, I hear voices in Italian, traffic sounds echoing off the stone wall.  I feel the texture of the uneven stones beneath my feet.  I imagine how uncomfortable the peeling bike seat would be.  I imagine, perhaps, two people walking away from the locked bikes down to a cafe at the end of the street.  The smell of cheese and bread, perhaps coffee, drift up the street.  

Have the riders stopped because the tire is flat or were these bikes left here years ago, weeks ago? I imagine the sound the bikes would make as they too off down the street.  The simple gears and rusty chain make an unmistakable sound.  The brakes likely squeal as the hardened rubber tries to catch the edge of the rusty wheel.  The cobblestones here would bounce the rider up and down uncomfortably and the seats look hard enough already.  Why would someone ride a bike this old?

Notice how I moved from sensory detail into questions about character in the paragraph above.  Sense is the way I get to character. If I let my mind spin out imaginings without shutting it down or getting distracted, I create a lively scene in my head.

Then it becomes easy to picture the object in three dimensions and move around in the photograph or painting.  If I stood next to the bikes in the picture, what would I see waiting just outside the frame.  The photographer or artist can become invisible at this point, or they can take center stage.  What else is happening in the scene that you can't see?  Are the bike riders arguing, kissing, opening the door to their apartment?  

When there are figures in the photograph or painting, I bring myself into the minds of those figures.  I wrote a poem about two paintings in one of the saloons at the National Gallery in Washington, D. C.  In the poem, I move from a painting by Picasso to a painting of Chaim Soutine and think about the way the figures in the paintings interact.  Here's an excerpt from that poem, "The National Gallery."

Maybe it’s because in The Family of Saltimbanques

the woman is separate, alone,

the focus of everyone’s gaze

that I think about how art can

keep us out, give us beauty or terror so grand

we must rest on the other side of it. . .

Here the figures themselves are the inspiration for my thoughts and maybe that's why I work hard to enter into the art work I'm writing from.  I wouldn't have noticed the interaction between the performers in the Picasso painting if I hadn't been willing to imagine myself in the frame.  And imagining myself within the frame of the earlier painting made it easier for me to be hit with a moment of lust as I looked at Chaim Soutine and saw in the painting his not paint on canvas, but a breathing person in a vivid room.   

As poets and storytellers and essayists, we're continually looking to express the experience of the other, and for me, the practice of writing from art helps me hone the ability to walk in another person's shoes and into a flat world that opens up for me when I step beyond the frame. 

The prompt today is to look at the photograph above, and let it inspire in you a poem, an essay, or a story.  I'd love to see what you come up with.  

Yes and No

I know I recently used this, but I should have saved it for this post.  Image © Lori Gravley.

“Everything will be okay in the end, if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”

This week, I got some great news.  A poem I submitted earned a first place prize which included a writer’s conference scholarship and publication.  An anthology that included five of my poems was accepted for publication.  My CSA asked to use on of my pictures from last year for their cookbook. 

I also got some disappointing news.  I wasn’t chosen for a mentorship I applied to, and one of the agents who had a full of my poetic memoir declined to represent me.  Her note was lovely and she had high praise for my work, but she felt she was representing too many verse novelists.  So, the answer was no.

Guess which bits of news I thought of more often.

This writer’s life is full of yesses and nos.  I understand that, but I hate no.  I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere in my childhood, I learned to hate it.  In fact, I stopped asking for things because the answer was so often no. 

It’s normal to dislike no, but I have such a strong aversion to it that for a long time I didn’t ask for people to read and accept my work.  I’ve been working with that aversion. 

But I’ve been wondering, recently, what other effects this aversion to no has had on my life.  How much do I avoid asking for things when the answer might be no? How often do I do it myself instead of asking someone who might say no?

I started a practice of sending out my work, knowing sometimes the answer would be no, but it’s a practice fraught with anxiety.  I wonder if I need some new mantra to repeat to myself.  The quote at the beginning of the post attributed seems to be a good place to start. 

My work and my writing life will find their right place in the end.  If they haven’t found a home, it’s not the end. 

Now, to move that mantra into my heart. 

Writing Prompt Wednesday: The Door of No Return

The Door of No Return, Cape Coast Castle, Ghana. Photo © Lori Gravley.

Along the coast of West Africa, you find many places where slaves were gathered before being sent on the Middle Passage to their permanent captivity in South America, the Caribean Islands, and North America.

In Ghana, one such place of embarkation was Cape Coast Castle.  Slaves were pulled from dungeons here and led in shackles down this hall to small boats that waited to take them to great ships.

When they went through this door, they may or may not have known that they would never return to homes from all over Africa where they had been taken by other Africans and sold to white traders who would ferried them to the new world.

In the twentieth century, the ancestors of slaves who had been taken began to return.  Some of them performed a ritual celebrating that return by walking from the ocean side pictured through the door to the fortress through this hall where there ancestors had left Africa hundreds of years before. Above the door on the other side is a sign which says "Door of Return."

Much has been written by scholars and story tellers about the slave trade, the middle passage, and slavery.  You might be inspired to research and add to those stories and imaginings, but for me, the notion of forced exit and eventual return is a rich and readily accesible human circumstance that doesn't require research or a vast knowledge of history (Prodigal Son, anyone).  My prompts come from there.

Five Ideas for Writing

1.  Write about a time someone was forced to leave something she didn't want to leave?
2.  Write about a time someone came back to a place he never thought he'd see again?
3.  Write about a door that changes those who walk through it?
4.  Write about thresholds.  Why do people cross over?  How much choice do people have in what happens on the other side?
5.  What if someone didn't want to leave but once they got through the door to the other side, they didn't want to come back through but were forced to.  What would happen (besides grabbing the door and kicking and screaming)?

Or write about anything else the picture inspires. Cheers.


 (Note: The someone above may be you ;-)

Doing What Scares You

The suspension bridge at Kakum National Park, Ghana

(built with funding assistance from USAID ;-).
© Lori Gravley, 2016

There is no illusion greater than fear.  --Lao Tzu

Yesterday, I went to Kakum National Park with the express intention of doing something that terrified me.  In Kakum, there is a seven-part rope walk suspended over 100 feet above the rain forest floor.  I am afraid of heights.

But, I've wanted to walk above the rain forest since I saw pictures of a canopy walk (as they are called) over ten years ago.  And I wanted to walk in the forest and get a feeling for Ghana outside the capital of Accra.

I had three other women willing to join me on the adventure.  So, we woke up early, ate a little breakfast, and then sat in market traffic for hours before we were able to truly leave the city behind and drive along the coast of Ghana to this beautiful park north of Accra.

We joined church and school groups on the short hike up to the first walkway.  Samuel, our guide, said, "If you're afraid of heights, don't look down." I repeated that excellent advice to myself as I stepped onto the first suspension bridge.  I grasped the ropes and walked step by step, making sure to put my feet firmly on the wooden planks.  I looked ahead.  I listened to the school children squealing and singing away their fear.  I smiled, if only to release endorphins.

By the third section, I was feeling more confident.  I could trust my feet to keep me on the path.  I could trust the bridge not to break.  I was far enough ahead of the children and teens that I didn't have to worry that they would do silly things to make the bridges sway or rumble.  I looked down, briefly.  I looked at the tops of the trees and a ground so far away and through so much foliage I couldn't see it. I put one foot in front of the other and enjoyed the walk.

It was a lot like the writing I'm sitting down to begin today, a re-visioning of my first Christine de Pizan middle-grade mystery, Bed of Bones.  I woke up thinking about a quote from Susan Jeffers that I had on my refrigerator when my first son was born, "Feel the fear and do it anyway."

I didn't fall yesterday.  I won't fail today.  And I'll try to remember Samuel's excellent advice, "If you're afraid, don't look down."  I don't have to see the ground in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  I'll just take the next step.

Above the canopy at Kakum National Park, Ghana. © Lori Gravley, 2016

Writing Prompt Wednesday: Venice Masks

Carnivale masks in a Venice shop window.

Of course, throughout Venice, you'll find windows and stores full of masks.  Most of these are quite traditional, but I was taken by this shop window with these non-traditional masks (notice how the bird could easily stand in for the Plague Doctor).

You'll never find me at Carnivale (too many people), but two of my favorite children's books show Venice at historic Carnivale--The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke and Sisters of Glass by Stephanie Hemphill.

So, take a look at the writing prompts below and use them to inspire your own Venice story, even if you've only been there on the net or in your imagination.

1.  Write a poem or story about putting on a mask and becoming a different creature.  Or about taking off the mask you normally wear and becoming your true self.

2.  Your best friend will put on a mask for Carnivale (learn more about Carnivale here) and so will you.  You've promised to meet in St. Mark's Square at 6 pm. You don't know what mask your friend is wearing.  How will you find him/her?  What happens i you are mistaken?

3.  Look up the history of Venetian masks (Wikipedia has a good entry as do many other sites).  What traditional mask would you have worn if you were a Venetian in the 19th century?  Why?  Write a story or poem from your 19th century masked-self's perspective.

4.  You walk into the house of a person you know (but not very well) and when you're looking for the bathroom, you find a room full of masks.  What happens next?

5.  Put a character you know well in a mask that doesn't seem to fit him/her very well.  Then write a story that shows how the mask that seemed so strange at first was the very best choice.

6.  Have a character don an animal mask above and then find that they are slowly becoming the mask they've chosen (sort of a Metamorphosis meets Jim Carey's The Mask).

7.  Put a masked gathering into a non-traditional setting:  a middle school dance, a party at work, your family Thanksgiving.  What happens when these characters put on masks?  Do some of them change?  Why? How? Do the changes disappear when they take off the masks?

Gathering In

The view from the drying room window in Tuscany.

I can't believe how long it's been since I last posted.  Right now, I'm sitting Accra, Ghana.  Three weeks ago I was on a Vespa tour in Tuscany.  In between, I managed the contractor's working on our house, hosted out-of-town guests, and celebrated my belle fille's graduation from Ohio State's graduate schools (MSW and MPH, go Sam)!! So, I've been a little busy.  But, still, I travel frequently for work, and I find time to write when I travel (usually).

But Italy was for vacation.  With my husband.  I had every intention of setting aside to write everyday; instead, I walked for miles on ancient streets (an average of over ten miles a day), ate gelato every afternoon, and spent nearly every waking minute (and the sleeping ones, too) with my husband of almost twenty-five years.

I wish I could be like Nora Roberts who is rumored to write several thousand words, even on vacation.  Some day, maybe vacations will be so commonplace that I can do that, but this was my long delayed honeymoon with my husband and our first big trip together, so I told myself that the trip was for gathering in.  I thought it was Jane Yolen who I first read talking about gathering in, but I can't find the essay now to share with you.  Instead, I'll give you my understanding of it.  

Gathering in is that time for a writer when they aren't actually writing but are experiencing the world, gathering in images, sensory data, information, emotions, conversations, and experiences that will someday inform their writing.  Frequently, I'll use my phone to capture things as photos, sounds, or texts.  Sometimes, I'll make notes in my daybook or journal.  Sometimes, I'll just soak in the world, let it wash over me and leave me new.  

In Italy, I did all of these things.  I have new ideas for picture books, for poems, and for a mid-grade or adult novel.  I've got more ideas for my Christine book.  I saw the Alps from the area in Italy Christine likely crossed over to France.  I saw medieval bridges that still contained the shops that were there in Christine's time but are no longer present on the bridges that link Paris and the Ile de France.  

Now, I'm back at work in Africa for a two-week class, and I'm enjoying my time alone.  I don't have to clean my room or cook dinner, so there's plenty of time to work and write, and now, that gathering in has left me bubbly with words waiting for a page.  Including these. Keep an eye out for some of the photos I took in Italy, some with writing prompts, that I'll be posting over the next few weeks.  

And enjoy your time writing and your time gathering in.