Finally got a copy of Mindy Nettifee's Glitter in the Blood: A Poet's Manifesto for Better Braver Writing. If you are a writer and don't own this book yet, I highly recommend it. Mindy is an incredible poet. She is also the Executive Director of the nonprofit Write Now Society.
I had the opportunity to see her perform at the Seattle Poetry Slam several months ago. She and Jeremy Radon (another awesome poet) did a double feature. She was this slip of a blond in crazy tights swishing a glass of whiskey, playing the keyboard, and delivering these amazing poems. I bought her book Rise of the Trust Fall and fell in love with her work.
Some of her strengths include incredible imagery, use of metaphor, and specificity. Her work stayed in my head long after I've read it and as a writer that is one of my biggest goals; to make a ripple in someone's brain. Glitter in the Blood is her how-to guide to taking risks. If you are looking for something to get you inspired and fill you with writing ideas, it is definitely the book for you. I used her 'found object prompt' in my last writing circle and wanted to pass on the fun. Go write something!
Here is the list (located on pg. 48). Pick one of more of the objects to incorporate into your poem:
• an antique pocket watch
• an elevator button
• a letter opener
• a restaurant match book with a phone number written in it
• a magnifying glass
• a Gordian knot
• a snow globe with a miniature city in it
• one earring
• a small statue of the Hindu deity Ganesha
• a mineral rock of some sort you cannot identify
• an old dictionary with the entire "R" section ripped out
• an old cassette labeled "To Jackie"
If you live in Seattle my writing circle, Soul Writers meets on the first Sunday of the month from noon-1:30PM at the Amor Spiritual Center on 2528 Beacon Ave S. All are welcome. We are a drop in community of writers coming together to find inspiration, set goals, and to make time to write.
Here is what I wrote:
I fell asleep with the elephant cradled in my palm. Having the tiny God of remembered truths, God of cleared pathways, a God beyond obstacles right there in my palm print was a comforting lullaby. But when I awoke Ganesha was gone and the city had disappeared. Another God had crept in during the night and ladled out a thick gray bisque that settled swamp like at the edge of my porch where the yard used to be.
I wandered from room to room peering through windows and finding nothing. No neighbors, no neighbors dog, no neighbor's soda cans rolling down my driveway, no driveway. No neighbor's dog shit land mining my yard. No yard. No street. As though the Rapture had come and sucked up everything in its path leaving me and my house as the last remaining island.
His love had come upon me just as suddenly and uninvited, settled in swamp-like at the periphery of my heart and mind, but stealing closer inch by damp inch. I pulled on boots. This was rain boot and wool socks weather. A cup of tea and a good book was tempting, but a part of me needed to know that the world was still out there somewhere. Instead I found the gray, a chill biting into bare hands. With every step forward a space cleared between me and the fog. There were in fact trees all around me, sidewalks, houses, tall metal street lamps glowing like halls cough drops. A tight globe of visibility moved with me as though I were fairy in a glass jar lit just enough to see my own footsteps and the nothingness moving in to erase them.
GPS only works when you can see the streets and the signs marking them. I was lost in him already, a foot beyond my house and wondering how some place so familiar could suddenly seem so foreign.
Reagan Jackson is a writer, artist, YA fiction aficionado, afro-punk, international educator, and community organizer based in Seattle, WA. You can find her most Tuesdays at the Seattle Poetry Slam or maybe just being nerdy at her favorite bookstores.
