Spring Spots Assignment for Poetry I and II
Select a spot near your home where you can immerse yourself in nature, or if there is no suitable place near your home, pick a place convenient enough for you to go frequently to sit and write. Over the next month, sit in your selected spot five times and observe the changes in nature. Collect images each time, and date your collections. You may write poetry each time, or you may make lists that can be used in poetry later. Submit typed image collections or poem drafts after each sitting. Submit three revised poems using the collected images or poem drafts by the time you return from spring break. The subject(s) of the poems are up to you. Submit up to three nature poems (those created in your Spring Spot or those previously written) to the contest below:
Friends of Acadia Nature Poetry Competition (no fee)  
Postmark Deadline: April 30 http://www.friendsofacadia.org/events/poetrycompetition.shtml
Submissions are invited for the 2010 Friends of Acadia Poetry Competition. Established in 1998, this prize is presented biennially to promote and recognize distinctive nature poetry. The three top-ranked poems will be published in the Friends of Acadia Journal (print and online), and awarded cash prizes by category ($350, $250, $150).
Nature-based poems of 30 lines or fewer will be accepted. Include cover sheet stating author's name and address and poem title. Do not include author's name on manuscript(s). Please format your poems using 12-point Times New Roman (default font)—no "unique" fonts. 
Authors may submit up to three poems for consideration. Entries must be original, unpublished, and not submitted elsewhere. There is no fee to enter. Entries will not be returned. The competition results will be announced in the Summer 2010 issue of Friends of Acadia Journal, to be mailed and published online in early August.
Please submit your entries to: Editor, Friends of Acadia Journal, P.O. Box 45, Bar Harbor, ME 04609, editor@friendsofacadia.org. If sending via email, please include your submissions as attachments.
Please enjoy "In The Backyard", winner of the 2008 Friends of Acadia Poetry Award:  

 
  In The Backyard

We tell our stories wide-eyed
as though we don't believe
them ourselves—how the blue jay

sat among the beans three days
straight and the Vidalia onions
bloomed on strong green stems,

their gauzy bridal caps folding
back, presenting their white bouquets.
How she had died on the last day

of spring and what that meant.
How on the evening of the funeral,
as twilight and the lightning bugs




arrived, and as our grief was just
beginning, two deer—a buck and a doe—
stepped slow and high-footed into the yard,

glowing tawny against the green
silhouette of apple trees. How the buck
moved into the next yard but the doe

lingered, how she looked up at us
gathered behind the porch railing, then
lowered her head again to the grass.

How she wasn't afraid. How the roses
bloomed so heavy the branches
lay in the dirt.
  Beverly Voigt

If Sarah accepted your poem to the Grocery List Anthology, your 100 word Bio. is due tomorrow, April 1!  

Don't forget all the poetry contests due by March 31st:  Sarah Mook, Word Works, and Grocery List Anthology.  Also, check out the link on the right of the page for Thirteen Ways of Looking at Facebook.  Thought you might enjoy it--especially Poetry I and II.
 

If you haven't sent your Grocery List Poem to Sarah Crossland, please send to gatsbygurl@gmail.com by March 31.  If you have already been accepted, you earn 5 CFPA points.  Please email me if you are accepted.
Thanks,
C. Hailey 

Submit up to three poems to the Sarah Mook Poetry Prize.  Optional $5 donation.
See website for exact formatting instructions and mailing address.

Website:  http://www.a2pwebdesign.com/poetrywits/poetrycontest/sarahmook.htm

Enter this competition with five or six poems.  You must mail your entries no later than March 31st during spring break.  Format your work exactly as it states in teh submissions guidelines so you won't be disqualified.  Website:  http://www.wordworksdc.com/young_poets.html

• Responses to Rilke's Letters
• Read the Introduction to Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet.  Jot notes in AJ.  Read Letter #1.  Write a response in which you consider the advice and discuss how you can apply it to yourself and your poetry.  Continue with the following letters in the same manner.  Occasionally, the letter might inspire a poem rather than a response.  A separate AJ number should be dedicated to the introduction and each letter. 
• Read the poem, “Ex-Boyfriends” by Kim Addonizio (see poetry folder at bottom of Fusion page). Write a poem about someone or something that haunts your dreams or your waking thoughts OR write about an ex-friend or ex-boyfriend or “ex-relative” (one you know longer spend as much time with or no longer live with). Use imagery and figurative language. Use enjambment and experiment with slant rhyme that does not follow a regular pattern. Revise so each stanza has the same number of lines.
• Read Tom C. Nunley's poem, "Father to the Man"(see poetry folder at bottom of Fu.sion page) Then jot down some questions to ask your parent(s) about your birth or adoption.  Try to record as many details as they can recall.  Then take on the voice of a parent or a composite of your parents.  Write a narrative poem that communicates some of the details of their experience as you came into their world.   Use diction and sensory detail to establish an appropriate tone and to communicate the emotions of the speaker.

• Read Deborah Digges’ poem, “Darwin’s Finches"(see poetry folder at bottom of Fusion page).  Consider some insight or advice from a parent when you were very young or a brief memory from your earliest childhood.  Project that into a time when you were older when the same idea or image or insight came to mind.  Or project some aspect of that idea into the future.  Segment your poem as Digges does to account for shifts in time or shifts in tone.  Incorporate elements of nature in your imagery and figurative language.

• Response to The Portable MFA: Poetry Chapter
• Read The Portable MFA: Poetry Chapter.  In your AJ, take notes as you read and respond as you read or following the reading.  Discuss what you learned from the reading and how you can apply the advice to your own poetry and learning.

• Response to The Poetry Home Repair Manual
• Read each chapter of Ted Kooser's The Poetry Home Repair Manual and write a response in your AJ.  The response should include notes, advice to yourself as a poet, and poetry experiments.
  

• Select a literary period to explore poetry and poets for the Poetry Fair (possibly on March 23rd and 24th). Read and respond to poems by poets from that period.

• Identify a poet for your Author Study.  You might study one poet for the entire semester if the poetic is prolific enough and information is readily available.  Or you may pick a poet for each quarter. 

• Write a proposal for a long poetry project you would like to begin or expand from something already started.  This writing can be a lengthy poem or a series of related poems.  We can look at some works by previous CFPA students as examples.

A.       

Author Study

r  Stories/novels you read – discuss in terms of the writing … how does the author do whatever s/he does? (See regular response assignment)

r  The author – what have you learned about his/her writing process, history, or theory about writing?

r  How does what you know about the author inform what you think/understand about the stories/novels and how they were written?

r  How does all of this relate to, inspire, inform, frustrate your own writing and process/approach/theory?  (Which implies that you have some understanding of what your process/approach/theory is … see metacognitive entries).

 

Eddas 2010 Spirography can be ordered now for $10!  The cost when it arrives in June will be $12.

Eddas 2009 Qualia is still on sale!

Cost Now Reduced to $10

Purchase in the Eddas room or outside the cafeteria when sales are set up.

Do you know a band? Are you a member of a band? Then submit a request to play at the Eddas Coffee House!

Currently looking for a band for the January 20th Coffee House.

Use the poems in this folder in order to completete the assignments.