Y’all, snow and ice is harder to draw than you’d think.
National Poetry Month Renga Day 1, Verse 1
Tag Archives: writing
National Poetry Month Starts Tomorrow!
I’ve been debating about how to celebrate National Poetry Month. I always do something on here to make the month special. I’ve written a poem a day. I’ve written and illustrated a haiku every day. This year I want to do something special because this year is special to me. It’s my first year I’ve actually had ambitions for my poetry.
I’ve been studying renga recently. It’s sort of an early form of slam poetry invented in Japan where poets would gather for a renga “party” and try to outdo each other with every verse. Haiku (and we all know I love haiku!) actually grew out of the renga format, which featured alternating verses of 17 and 14 syllables.
So I’ve decided to write a (sort of) renga over the course of April. Renga were normally written in honor of a celebration and, in a way, I’m celebrating a new beginning in my life in April. I think the title of the renga will be “Thawing”. Each verse will be illustrated. I will follow the format of alternating 17 and 14 syllables and at the end, I will (hopefully) have the first thirty pages of my next illustrated poetry book, Hypercreativity.
So join me tomorrow for verse 1. And we’ll see where we go from there.
Poem: Hypercreativity by Michelle Garren-Flye
It’s been a beat since my last update. Since then, I’ve spoken to a group of writers about my love of poetry and how it dropped me a rescue line during Covid. And I’ve had an explosion of creativity that has…
…brought me to a screeching halt.
How is that possible? When my brain is firing all its creative cylinders, how is it I can’t seem to create anything?
And it’s not totally true that I’m not creating. I am. I’m writing poetry and drawing and working on a book about my cat and gathering material for the next literary magazine. I’m entering contests and submitting poems (and getting rejected regularly). I’m working on a workshop about haiku/renga and researching poet laureates for a speech I’m giving at the end of April (National Poetry Month). I am creating.
I’m not finishing.
It’s the danger of hypercreative energy. And yet I’m still enjoying this surge because it’s been so long since I’ve felt creative at all. I’ll find a balance. Until then, I will go in as many different directions as I possibly can. All at once.
If I connect the dots and draw the lines right, maybe it’ll look like a star.
Or maybe just a jumble.
Hypercreativity
By Michelle Garren-Flye
No need to inspire
I am hypercreative
Ideas abound
Crowds of ideas
cloud my dreams each night and day
push reality
LOL: A Poem for the lovers
We don’t live in Dystopia…or Utopia (somebody please ban my books!)
There’s a list making the rounds of social media right now of “banned books”. Yeah, it sucks that such a list has to exist. We don’t live in Utopia. But are those books going anywhere? Will you ever have a really difficult time finding a copy of The Catcher in the Rye or The Harry Potter series? Probably not. (Even though J.K. Rowling has managed to piss off just about everyone.)
Why is this?
One simple reason. We may not live in Utopia, but we don’t live in Dystopia, either. Banned books are an effective tool employed by libraries and booksellers. There is no easier way to get your book on the bestseller list than to have it publicly banned. Human nature prompts us to immediately rush out and find out why those books were banned.
There are exceptions to this rule. When six Dr. Seuss books were withdrawn due to “hurtful and wrong” imagery, I had a hard time deciding how to feel about it. The reason for this can be found in And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street: “…a Chinaman who eats with sticks…” You might think that would be harmless, but I knew. I spent a large portion of my childhood with an image of Asian people wearing weird pointy hats and eating noodles with “sticks”. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I began to appreciate the beauty of Asian culture. And the fun. I’m a big anime and manga fan, and I’m listening to K-Pop right now thanks to my much less culturally insensitive daughter. Someday I hope to visit Japan, South Korea, China and anywhere else that will allow a humble American.
Yes, those Seuss books are mostly off the shelf or on sale on e-Bay for hundreds of dollars. But what happened to Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind when our “woke” culture wanted to cancel it? It hit number one on the Amazon bestseller list. You can still find it on Amazon, by the way. And the N-word has not been removed. Same for Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. And everybody knows about the success of another “banned” book, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. For the most part, there are no bonfires of these banned books, and even if there are, you can’t burn digital copies and more copies are printed of most of them everyday, anyway.
That’s why when I get requests to feature banned books more prominently in my store, I have to admit I don’t have very many of them. They’re sold out.
A List for Looking Back, a Poem for Looking Forward
Sometimes life just decides to take a bite out of our lives, our happiness, our capacity to feel joy. That was my 2021.
I’m trying to fight back by leaving the loss of joy behind me with the change of the year. But I can’t help looking back. Even as I know that’s not where joy is going to come from.
There are many reasons I can’t stop peeking into the rearview mirror of life. Unresolved issues. Unspoken words. A plethora of both unwarranted and earned emotions.
But as I steal glances into my recent past, I see some bright spots, too, even if they were tinged with the grey of all of the above.
- Becoming the Heart of the Pamlico Poet Laureate
- Earning some much-deserved recognition for my bookstore (check out the January 2022 issue of Our State Magazine!)
- Publishing two illustrated poetry books (UnSong and 100 Warm Days of Haiku) and two issues of The Next Chapter Litearary Magazine
- Deepening friendships and making new ones
- Learning (through necessity) I can do more than I ever gave myself credit for—and enjoying it!
It’s impossible to know what’s coming in 2022. If there’s one thing the past two years have taught us, it’s that. But I’m choosing to believe that whatever is in my rearview mirror, joy is still out there for me. Somewhere on the horizon ahead.
Part two of my poetry reading series
Taking Steps: A Poetry Reading About Winter
As a poet laureate, I’m supposed to be spreading my love of poetry far and wide. As someone who is less than enamored with the sound of her own voice, this is a difficult charge for me. However, as I take this position seriously, today I impulsively decided to record a short poetry reading and post it on social media. I selected two poems about winter. The first is, ahem, not mine but by a poet you might recognize. The second is mine, one of my favorites that I wrote last year about this time. The video below is of the impromptu reading I conducted in my bookstore. It’s the first in my series, Poetry Readings, which will be posted on my Instagram account, michellegflye.
Grateful
Last night I saw this rose blooming by my doorstep.
I had been feeling pretty bleak about the holiday. My life is not what it was a year ago. But when I saw that rose, I paused for a second. That rose must be pretty damn determined to bloom because it’s been downright cold the past couple of nights. It made me think about my attitude.
Yes, one part of my life sucks. But there are so many other aspects that really don’t. I have my kids and my store, my new home and my pets (especially Derby of the magical purr). I have my family and more friends than I really deserve. And I am grateful. For each and every one of these things, I am heartfelt, on my knees grateful.
Sometimes, when things are tough, we forget there are always things to be grateful for. And sometimes if you start counting the small things you have, you realize there are some pretty big things to be grateful for also. And if there aren’t at the moment, then concentrate on the beauty of those small things. Remember, rose bushes start out as tiny seeds.
Happy thanksgiving.
Coincidence or Synchronicity? Spooky ties! And an angel?
I’m currently embroiled in putting the finishing touches to the fourth issue of The Next Chapter Literary Magazine. I’ve often been bewildered (in a good way) by the way synchronicity works in my life. My bookstore for instance. Derby, my bookstore cat, for another. If I hadn’t been on Facebook at the right time, I’d never have seen his picture. And his magical purr would never have been there to help me through the hardest time of my life thus far.
Back to happier thoughts, though. This issue has had its share of confusingly coincidental happenings. I decided back in the summer to use a photo that was submitted for the last issue as the cover for this issue and use the theme of history. I invited one of the local authors to write the introduction. And everything fell together from there, from the submissions I received to the dedication.
Maybe I’ve read too much scifi and fantasy, but I’m a firm believer that there is a force that holds us all together. Some believe it’s their god. Some think the earth itself binds us. Jedi call it “The Force” (based loosely on the Chinese belief in “chi”). Maybe it’s just gravity.
I believe we are more of a hive mind than we’d like to let on, and that mind spans our history as well as our present and possibly our future. Hear me out. There might even be a scientific explanation for it.
In 2016, physicist Ronald Hanson proved Einstein’s dismissal of “spooky action at a distance” wrong by separating two entangled quantum particles to a significant distance and performing experiments on them, noting that the separated particle reacted in the same way as the one being experimented on. Or something like that. At any rate, the experiment proved spooky action was possible at a distance. So there was a tie between those two particles.
The universe is full of these ties, and I believe they can affect lives. But maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe it’s the work of angels. Back in the summer on a day when I was feeling particularly badly about my life, a lovely woman with a cheerful smile and an enthusiastic attitude walked into the store. She exclaimed over everything in the store and bemoaned that she hadn’t brought her wallet with her. She said she’d be back. As she left, she looked over her shoulder and said, “I’m Joy and I’ll be seeing you.”
I haven’t seen her since…but I believe I will.
BREATHE: Michelle Garren-Flye 