Our prompt for today is to use Donald Justice’s poem, “There is a gold light in certain old paintings,” which plays with both art and music, and uses an interesting and possibly self-invented form. His six-line stanzas use lines of twelve syllables, and while they don’t use rhyme, they repeat end words. Specifically, the secondContinue reading “What do you see?”
Author Archives: grahamswords1962
The game
April 12. Today’s brief; try writing a poem that makes reference to one or more myths, legends, or other well-known stories, that features wordplay (including rhyme), mixes formal and informal language, and contains multiple sections that play with a theme. Try also to incorporate at least one abstract concept – for example, desire or sorrowContinue reading “The game”
Diamond Island
April 11. Eleven days in and we are asked to work up a Villanelle using lines from songs. I took my inspiration from Dylan Thomas, Simon and Garfunkel and Pink Floyd. Sometimes, you just need to hear your own voice say, it’s going to be OK. I am a rock; I am an island.When wildContinue reading “Diamond Island”
Eye Per Bowl
April 10. Today’s task? To tenderise our texts with titillation and alliteration and punning and see if we can work in references to at least one word we have trouble spelling, and one that we’ve never quite been able to perfectly understand. I don’t think I fully met the brief, but then again, when didContinue reading “Eye Per Bowl”
No winds blow here
April 9. Day nine of NaPoWriMo 2025 and we are tested with the task of writing a work that rhymes but does not follow a set pattern or form. Today I took an online visit to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, USA and looked at the Birdcase exhibition (yes, I know it should beContinue reading “No winds blow here”
Skin deep
April 8. The Museum of Bad Art in Boston, USA claims to house a collection of sincere art in which something has gone wrong in a way that results in a compelling, interesting image. I recommend it’s current collection of In the Nood, it is quite the something and from where I borrowed the aboveContinue reading “Skin deep”
The Amazing Owl
April 7. Once again, the prompt took me to brand new and far off places. I picked up the gauntlet of being asked to write a self-portrait poem, in which I explain why I am not a particular piece of art and in which I use at least one outlandish comparison, and a strange (andContinue reading “The Amazing Owl”
Banana
April 6. Today’s prompt has (I felt) a cryptic twist – pick a number between 1 and 10 then name and focus your poem on the taste of a respective item in a grid that also provides words to include in the poem. I chose the number eight and instantly regretted it as the subjectContinue reading “Banana”
The centaur and the dulcimer
April 5. We were asked to choose a musical genre and a line for inspiration then select one or more words from a list to include in our poem – I chose to try and use them all in a frivolous poem Imagine, if you would,A centaur playing a dulcimer aboard a yacht,Its hooves tipContinue reading “The centaur and the dulcimer”
Broken Moon
April 4. What is life with a painting? That is our subject for today. I love the way our prompts transport me to times and places I had forgotten; this is not a very good one, as in time and place, not the prompt. I bought the print of Egon Schiele’s Woman in Green StockingsContinue reading “Broken Moon”
Missives & Musings 