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April 30, 2014
Timelessness
Over the course of the WIR experience, I’ve often used my morning writing time to work on that day’s blog. This is sacred time when I shut the door on all distractions, from phone calls to my cat ...
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April 29, 2014
Questions Not to Ask While Facing a Blank Page
Is enjambment supposed to be pronounced with a French accent?What do you do when you unpack a line and can’t figure out where you thought you were going in the first place?Is a metaphor just a simile ...
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April 28, 2014
Shake It Up
Range is something to aim for – a poet’s ability to go multiple, whistle one minute, moan the next. Sound like a basset hound, then go for a high-pitched squawk of geese. Try tender, then bold; try ...
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April 26, 2014
The Most Important Skill
Someone asks me what’s the most important skill a poet can have and I start to say the power of observation. The world awaits us with all sorts of small truths that can’t easily be seen. When I lose ...
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April 25, 2014
A Poem Can Be About Anything
I came across a cat writing contest on the internet. At first I thought that the poems had to be written by cats and was sure that my Iris Belle had a stanza or two inside her just waiting to creep out ...
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April 24, 2014
Poetic
Tell a classroom of wannabe writers to try their hands at a poem and the stilted, strangely wrought language that ensues can be alarming. It’s like they’re being told to write in some World War II ...
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April 23, 2014
The War Series: Writers as Readers, with Evan Munday
Evan Munday is the Silver Birch Award-nominated author and illustrator of middle grade novel Dial M for Morna, The Dead Kid Detective Agency and the graphic novel Quarter Life Crisis: Only the Good Die ...
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April 23, 2014
More Revision
A friend confesses that he could spend the rest of his life revising a handful of the same poems. One change leads to another. It’s like a glassblower unsure whether to make a swan or a squirrel, the ...
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April 22, 2014
Endurance
It was a minute-and-a-half since I finished toying with a poem that hadn’t been working for weeks; I had that submarine feeling that it was sinking out of sight. But I had no time to dither with the ...
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April 21, 2014
Devoured
Some days I want to tear chunks off the alphabet, chop up syllables, sink my teeth into the gristle of grammar. I discovered a ferruginous hawk up a tree in my backyard the other day with the peeled pink ...
