Finalist in Poetry Contest
Greetings! It’s been awhile since I did a blog
post. Funny, since the last blog post I
did I got a lot of hits. I just needed a
break I guess. So, let’s get too
it. First, I wanted to brag that I was a
finalist in the June 2018 poetry contest on Goodreads Poetry! Group, with my
poem “Talking Walls.” I didn’t win, or get many votes, but a couple people
posted they liked it, and I’m glad that my poetry was able to reach somebody. To see it along with the other 6 finalists (out
of over 200, Wow) you can go to https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/19356279-please-vote-for-the-june-2018-poetry-contest If you don’t want to click on anything here
it is for you:
Talking Walls
We
are painted on the walls.
A
stale empty white expounds character,
like
full chaotic colors.
Memories
encased in drywall.
Bleeding
out to eyes searching the
multitudes
of expression.
The
memory of a friend passed on,
hangs
a dragon by the door.
A
blue Angel flies above the television
pondering
the traveling friend who painted her.
The
deer by the church are uncertain
of
their wintering creator,
wondering
if it is a dead relative.
The
flutist gazing at the caged Nightingale remembers
the
living family that gifted her.
A
photograph of a daughter much younger
stares
at passerby’s with her name in ceramics
next
to the TV.
She
has spoken to the walls in handprints
intentionally
placed, and accidently.
A
mother experiments with her creative process,
hanging
pieces of her soul for various eyes seeing…
Strangers,
Lovers, Her Own.
Her
walls are an exhibition of her life,
they
speak of her pronouncements in confidence.
What
do other walls among other dwelling speak?
Curious
minds must stare and extract.
Minds
meld personalities.
Walls
for examiners to notice insights of soul and life.
Using My Own Poetry Exercise
On
a somewhat related note, I haven’t entered any poetry contests since then and I
haven’t really written any more poetry.
I am proud, that this poem was written in one of the exercises I wrote
about previously in this blog: looking at your surroundings and writing about
them. This is written about the things I
have on my living room walls. I didn’t
really do any edits to this. I have
started editing and rewriting my other poetry though. I discovered this cool thing in Word, where
you can go into the review section and click “Read Aloud Speech” and it will
read your work back to you. No fancy
editing programs needed!
Public Domain Images and Poetry Reviews
I’d
like to say that breaks are good for the soul!
I didn’t take a complete break, I did find a lot of poetry I have
written and started making a new book about the cycle of the year and seasons. I’m not sure if I’m going to self-publish it
or not, but I was kind of hoping I could find a publisher who could do all the
marketing work for me. I’m just not good
at doing that kind of thing. My
published poetry book “Un-Clenched Emotion” doesn’t have any pictures except
for the cover, and I regret that, so I’m going to try to add pictures to my new
one. I was always afraid that if I used
something from the internet, people would consider it stealing. Well, I found out that there’s this thing
called “Public Domain Images” where you can use the pictures in anyway you want
for sale or for fun. There are a couple
of websites you can go to, to find these kind of images. I’ve started doing this with my blog to make
it look better too. I also did reviews
of 5 poetry chapbooks so far, and got my book reviewed too. Only one person was able to post the review
on Amazon so far, but I do have 3 four-star reviews on Goodreads at https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32320363-un-clenched-emotion. I hope you have learned something from this
post, or just found a little enjoyment from it.
Until next time!
