Tag: Writing

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Hot Reads, Etc.

Charlotte Hamrick

There’s so much good reading and listening on the Internet it’s overwhelming. How do you choose which piece to read,which podcast to listen to, which video to watch? And I’m always wondering if I’ve missed some really fantastic thing. In just the past few days I’ve read some really good stuff and, this morning, watched a very cool Periscope post by Indian chef Kalyan Karmakar. Do you watch Periscope? I downloaded the app a while ago but have only watched a couple of Lonely Planet posts. But when I logged on today there was a notification that this was streaming … Continue reading Hot Reads, Etc.

My Poetry, NaPoWriMo 2016, Poetry1 Comment

Why It Must Come

Charlotte Hamrick

“…poetry isn’t revolution but a way of knowing why it must come.” —Adrienne Rich, “Dreamwood” Why It Must Come (After Adrienne Rich) The one great choice is made instinctively, there is no manual no set of directions. The hand-me-down desk has no typewriter or even a pen and paper. The poet needs none of it. Possibilities birth in the brain, its crevices filled with currents and hot-air balloons flying with ideas. The poem is the possibility of a myriad of choices. To create the poem is the one great choice. ***** So it’s the last day of National Poetry Month … Continue reading Why It Must Come

Books, Found Poetry, My Poetry, NaPoWriMo 2016, Photography, Poetry3 Comments

They Were All There, Gleaming

Charlotte Hamrick

Without him, a faint image became clearer. The curtain hanging before my eyes, flat and cold, removed. Over me, the jeweled colors appear brighter than they were. ***** So, I worked my own prompt today, my version of an erasure poem. Erasure poems, to me, are too messy – you know, all that black marker. So I just take a block of text and search for words and phrases  and either underline or write them down as I go. This poem was derived from the following paragraph in The Girl With the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (Penguin Books, 1999) … Continue reading They Were All There, Gleaming

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Of Little Hands and Feet

Charlotte Hamrick

What wasn’t: Deliverance Baptismal Secular Miracle A Happy Childhood A Drowning Scene What was: A Burning Resuscitation Conversion A Sanctuary The Other Side of Drowning ***** Prompt courtesy of Greg Santos on Found Poetry Review. Greg suggested several prompts and I settled on a Table of Contents poem which ended up a list poem. My source: The Chronology of Water, Yuknavich, Lidia, Hawthorne Books, 2011. Btw, this is an astounding book. I wrote about it here Continue reading Of Little Hands and Feet

My Poetry, NaPoWriMo 2016, Poetry, Poets, Pop Culture2 Comments

Thank You for a Funky Time

Charlotte Hamrick

Pick a day when the sunlight dances on little red Corvettes and snow in April, when elevators reach a higher floor and you can always see the sun. Choose a day that incites a parade so purple the cells in your body tingle like pop rocks and guitars exploding, feeling proud in the light of this power. Give the world all your extra time and kiss this parade we call life where he taught us to love and laugh and celebrate in purple rain and stars that fall from the sky. *****   Prompt courtesy of Found Poetry Review: Take an erasure … Continue reading Thank You for a Funky Time

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For Joy

Charlotte Hamrick

I never expected to make the journey that pulls you toward helplessness and illness and demands you step up. The journey that structures your life around spoon feedings during Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune and whatever else crawls across the tv while you’re coaxing your loved one to eat. It was a journey of patience and perseverance, of constant advocacy for excellence of care, of schedules and massages, hair brushing and body-turning. It was a journey of acceptance for the inevitable but without a thought of giving up. It was a journey I was honored to travel, one in which I … Continue reading For Joy

My Poetry, NaPoWriMo 2016, Photography, Poetry4 Comments

The Poet is Highjacked from National Poetry Month

Charlotte Hamrick

  It’s your fault, New York. You grabbed me by the heart and shook out all the doubts, all the fears, all the hurts and disappointments. You ran your fingers around my brain, pulled out all the murky stuff and replaced it with the brightness of yellow taxis streaking down the avenues, the open-faced grins of locals walking dogs, the clinking glasses and laughter of after-work drinks, children running through spring kissed grass in Central Park. You, New York, you are the reason I forgot about National Poetry Month and didn’t write a single poem for nine days because you … Continue reading The Poet is Highjacked from National Poetry Month

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Lost

Charlotte Hamrick

***** Nico Vassilakis provided today’s poetry prompt via Found Poetry Review. This one was definitely outside my wheel house. The prompt was to utilize a technique called “vispo“. I chose the word “indigo” because it’s a word I like both phonetically and visually. This is not a poem in the sense of what we expect a poem to be but it did engage my senses and encouraged me to think of ways to communicate “indigo” in a maybe unexpected way. Of course, I turned to photography and manipulated a photo I had taken for this prompt. Anyway. It was fun … Continue reading Lost

My Poetry, NaPoWriMo 2016, Poetry4 Comments

Bar Girl

Charlotte Hamrick

She is a moon-faced daughter in a gravel-pit bar crowd open to God for a second chance or a bed of coals. She is a stand-in, pleading fire for a loud so furious, so crashing, lightning balls jump right up to show you how it’s done. ***** Writing prompt courtesy of Collier Nogues via Found Poetry Review for National Poetry Month. My sources were one of my favorite poems, “Pearl”, by Dorianne Laux and a magazine advertisement for Otezla. Continue reading Bar Girl

My Poetry, NaPoWriMo 2016, Poetry2 Comments

That Feeling of Drowning

Charlotte Hamrick

It doesn’t take water to drown. It only takes an absence of air from a shock to the system. That one tiny moment when disbelief dissolves recognition or grief consumes reason. The moment that expands in waves onto your private beach bringing a loss of direction, a losing of way, a distortion of things once solid. Falling into murky silence where everything is muffled, the insulation entices. Just close your eyes and drift. Continue reading That Feeling of Drowning