We’ve been in the trenches for a few days, and so Mark Stratton says it’s time to get personal! Here’s Mark’s prompt for Day #5:
Make your poetry personal. I mean, it already is, right? It’s thoughts, observations, deep, dark, personal feelings and stories dressed up in pretty words and oblique descriptions. You get it, and some others get it.
Still others see it as something else entirely, which is great, honestly. We have our own set of filters our lives go through, and this influences how we interpret things. It is part of what makes reading poetry fun and interesting for me.
Today, let’s make poetry really personal. Give poetry, as you write it, a name. Possibly a gender. And a personality. A poet I know has written (and continues to write) a series of poems based on this principle, and I shamelessly ripped it off (with permission, of course) and made a poem I called “Sasha.” Sasha is many things, all at the same time, yet all are Sasha/poetry to me.
So it’s your turn. Give poetry — how you view poetry, what poetry means to you, your poetry — a name. Now write a poem (that) suits your view or vision.
NATASHA
I wrote mine about Natasha, I've mentioned her before in Whatever happened to the corner shop and in Surveillance. Today I asked her what she thought about poets, and she said 'they talk to themselves all day long.' So I wrote down what she said and everytime she said themselves I changed the word to Natasha. It's a bit experimental, so I hope you like it.
HERE GOES:
they're talking about Natasha
they're too self indulgent

