Kortney Garrison

Homeschooling With Ease

The Magic of Index Cards

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In a recent episode of her podcast, writing coach Ann Kroeker talked about the moment she got serious about writing. A visiting professor showed her class a box of 3×5 cards. On each card he had written the name of a poem and then all the journals where he had submitted the poem. After seeing his system for tracking submissions, Ann went to the bookstore and bought her own filing box and stack of cards. She was a writer! And this was how professional writers worked. This action marked the beginning of Ann’s professional career.

Although I use a simple spreadsheet instead of index cards, the process sounded very familiar. I think I started keeping track after an excellent class with Rachel Mindell. Keeping the spreadsheet updated is a small way to stay in touch with a larger, ongoing faithfulness to the work.

I will be using index cards in the coming weeks to participate in ICAD, Index Card a Day. The idea is to use a small, cheap, accessible medium and create something every day for the months of June and July. We’ve been participating for years and LOVE the community of creators that share their work. It’s a great way to welcome in Summer and share a tiny bit of creative work with kids.

Intrigued? You can learn more from (clockwise from upper left): Tammy @ Daisy Yellow, Amy @ Creativity Matters Podcast, Tammy @ Daisy Yellow, Teresa @ Right Brain Planner, and Amy @ Creativity Matters Podcast….every link is to new, inspiring words + art by these talented women! I hope the beginning of Summer is creative + nourishing.

Nonets with Irene Latham

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This week I spent a morning learning about nonets with Irene Latham. The nonet is a syllabic, 9-line form with each line’s syllable count ascending or descending. Irene’s book Nine: A Book of Nonet Poems is a collection that shows just how thoughtful and sophisticated poetry for children can be.

Here’s one of the poems that came out of the workshop. I was thinking about the revision history of a haiku that will be published next month. I was also playing with the title of Natalie Goldberg’s Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage Into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku. Melissa Wiley said this may be her favorite Goldberg, and I agree! Part travelogue, part historical notes on haiku, altogether enchanting.

Three
simple
lines become
a rectangle.
Doorway, gate, portal,
a pair of slim couplets.
Mirrors, twins, both like and unlike,
still holding the turn, the surprise,
the way through the open door to God.

Here’s one more found poem built from my notes during Irene’s workshop, including the title of one of her forthcoming books!

Visit Jama’s Alphabet Soup for all the Poetry Friday goodness!

Three on Poetry Friday

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Three short takes on poetry for this sunny Friday…

Alan Jacobs writes that both Borges and Neruda considered English the best language for poetry because of the great number of one syllable words. This is fascinating to me! Of course, it sent me back to my own small poems…where there are plenty of one syllable words. I love their weighty heft. Like smooth stones in my hand that just might skip over the surface of a poem.

In a recent newsletter, Jocelyn K. Glei shared Jazz Keys. It’s a simple program that composes music while you type. We’ve been having lots of fun alternating basketball dream teams with character names for a novel. Take a listen to this wee poem of mine about the coming of Spring. Even my typos are melodic!

Finally, I was a guest on a recent episode of the Read-Aloud Revival podcast. The RAR team talked about ALA award winners including a new picture book biography of poet Gwendolyn Brooks called Exquisite as well as Cat Man of Aleppo by Karim Shamsi-Basha and Irene Latham. My copy of Irene’s delightful book This Poem Is a Nest arrived this week, and I am utterly charmed by the idea of creating nestling poems out of a source text.

So much more Poetry Friday goodness at my juicy little universe!

Poet as Citizen

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“Political” poetry by men remains stranded…the enemy is always outside the self, the struggle somewhere else. –Adrienne Rich

Open the body to grief, turning your face to your own life, absorbing the failures your parents and your country have suffered. –Robert Bly

The thing to do is grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear. –Zora Neale Hurston

One of the most subversive things you can do is spend as much time as possible nurturing what is not machine-like. –Austin Kleon

Hard times are coming when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom–poets, visionaries–realists of a larger reality. –Ursula K. LeGuin

Be joyful
though you have considered all the options.
–Wendell Berry

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
–Theodore Roethke

{An accidental collection winnowed out of my journal from the last two months that feels like a reliable pattern to follow for the next two months.}

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