"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Archive for the ‘Writing Coaching & Workshops’ Category

Daily Prompt Catch-Up! Prompts for Days!

 

6/30/2016

“The human brain holds in its cradle its own strangeness”-Eric Waggoner Make art about the brain, the magic of the brain, its beautiful strangeness.

human brain on art

7/1/2016

I could spend my life trying to distill the feeling of a summer porch”~Jessie van Eerden Make art about that summer porch.

summer porch snapping beans

7/2/2016

Make art inspired by this quote: “Who looks after the sensitive child?”~Nikky Finney

sensitive child

7/3/2016

You have to let the Light in.”~Nikky Finney Make art about ways of letting the Light in.

7/4/2016

I wrote a poem today called “What Goliath Wants Us To Know.” Make art about what someone—real or mythical, living or dead—wishes we knew.

7/5/2016

Alton Sterling ❤

7/6/2016

Philando Castile ❤

7/7/2016

Dallas shootings ❤ Brent Thompson, Patrick Zamarripa, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, and Lorne Ahrens.

7/8/2016

I’m struggling to function in the sorrow of what we’re doing to each other. Keep singing a song I learned as a child, One Tin Soldier.

Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago
‘Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below

On the mountain was a treasure
Buried deep beneath the stone
And the valley-people swore
They’d have it for their very own

Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away

So the people of the valley
Sent a message up the hill
Asking for the buried treasure
Tons of gold for which they’d kill

It came an answer from the mountain
With our brothers we will share
All the secrets of our mountain
All the riches buried there

Go ahead and hate your neighbor
Go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven
You can justify it in the end
There won’t be any trumpets blowing
Come the judgment day
On the bloody morning after
One tin soldier rides away

Now the valley cried with anger
“Mount your horses! Draw your sword!”
And they killed the mountain-people
So they won their just reward

Now they stood beside the treasure
On the mountain, dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it
“Peace on Earth” was all it said

Make art about what matters.

7/9/2016

Thanks and Love to Eric Waggoner for his seminar at the West Virginia Wesleyan MFA residency on writing ugly topics. Robert Bly said, “Dare to do something ugly.” Do this. Take on something ugly.

7/10/2016

Garmin took us down some strange backroads today, as it does at times 🙂 Today it took us down a two lane road with no lines, through a series of unicorporated communities, one of which was particularly sweet, Batesville Virginia. As we entered this tiny crossroad community, we passed a stone pillar with the word Elysium carved into it. Love letters from the Universe?

According to Eustathius of Thessalonica, the word “Elysium” (Ἠλύσιον) derives from ἀλυουσας (ἀλύω) and means to be deeply stirred from joy, or from ἀλύτως, synonymous of ἀφθάρτως (ἄφθαρτος) incorruptible, referring to the incorruptible joy of a soul in this afterlife.

Make art about your idea of the afterlife.

elysian fields

 

7/11/2016

Finding peace in doing the daily tasks of being home: folding laundry; washing dishes; sweeping floors. Make art about those moments when the mundane intersects with the divine.

black cat broom

7/12/2016

Lost a feline family member today, Dobi. She ruled our home with the most regal feline disdain for ten years, and my heart is broken at her going. Make art about what our animal family means to us.

Dobi

7/13/2016

Coffee in the garden. Reminders of the cycles. Make art about what goes on, about what continues.

vine spirals

 

Daily Prompt <3 Hard Travelin' for the Tender Hearted.

29 June 2016

“It’s hard to wake up sometimes and look back at your life with clear eyes, isn’t it? All the Hello’s and Goodbye’s, and all the things said and left unsaid, whether they were timely, or easy, or uncomfortable or boltfree, or jarring, or just plain true, at least for you, in the moment of their saying.And once you’re awake you have to listen to the now, or ignore it and pretend that it’s just not there. Tricky stuff for the strongest of us, and hard travelin’ for the tender hearted. Like pilgrims on some dusty trail, the long line of true believers stretches into nothingness, and the shadows of the don’t fit in’s move along like so much smoke, pungent and ethereal, lingering toward home.”~John Little Bear Eaton

Make art about the don’t fit in’s. 

Bear 2007

John Little Bear Eaton

Daily Prompt <3 On Work

28 June 2016

“if you’re  old enough to read this you know what work is”~Philip Levine

Make art about what work is. 

HowWeWork

Daily Prompt <3 Are We Prepared?

27 June 2016 

This morning, keep thinking about, hearing,  a line from a poem by my mentor and friend, the poet Liam Rector, from his poem “This Summer.” 

“Our motto: Fight to live; prepare to go.”~Liam Rector 

Make art about preparation, about being prepared. Or about fighting to live. 

liam

Still listenin, Big Dog. Still miss you. 

You can read the full poem “This Summer” here. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Prompt <3 What Will We Leave Behind?

 

26 June 2016

“I leave to you a curious loom,
That I have wrought my dreams upon;
I beg you lay your hand to it
and weave a pattern when I’m gone.”

~James Lovell

Make art about legacy.

woman weaving

Daily Prompt Love <3 Country Traffic Jam

 

25 June 2016

Encountered a little slow down on the road yesterday 🙂 Three calves had broken out and were gleefully chasing around, having a high old time 🙂

Make art about unexpected obstacles. 🙂 Or about unexpected freedom 🙂

cows in the road

 

 

Daily Prompt <3 See You Later, Arrivederci, Au Revoir, Auf Wiedersehen, Slán, Adiós

24 June 2016

Brexit. 

Make art about choosing to leave, even when the choice leaves the future completely uncertain. 

great briitain leaves european union metaphor

united kingdom exit from europe relative image

Daily Prompt <3 What Lightning Desires

23 June 2016

Wrote a poem this morning 🙂 Haven’t done that in a while 🙂 Called “The Girl Lightning Loved” 🙂 

The Girl Lightning Loved

didn’t know how deeply she burned, was burned, her bones wicked through lifetime after lifetime….~Mary Carroll-Hackett 

Make art about what lightning, about what lightning desires. 

lightning girl

 

Daily Prompt Love <3

6/21/2016

I was raised Catholic, and in cultures that are very comfortable with the dead.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
May they rest in peace.

Amen.

Make art celebrating the dead. Or write a prayer for the dead. 

 

Handprints

 

6/22/2016

Hold on, to me as we go
As we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave is stringing us along
Just know you’re not alone
‘Cause I’m going to make this place your home

Settle down, it’ll all be clear
Don’t pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you’re not alone
‘Cause I’m going to make this place your home

~written by Greg Holden and Drew Pearson, performed by Phillip Phillips

Make art about remembering you’re not alone.

 

prayer dead

 

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❤ ❤ ❤

Solstice Prompt <3 Memories of Lovers and the Body as Grace

20 June 2016

Here’s a solstice poem I wrote a few years ago, memory of a solstice back when I was a girl of eighteen, enchanted with a beautiful boy 🙂

This poem appears in my book If We Could Know Our Bones, from A-Minor Press

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Remembering the Body as Grace

We all live in a house on fire. Tennessee Williams

1

I dream back the hot slow sky your body was above me, goldleafed and dappled in early sun, in those running heated days of baggy shorts, thin shoulder straps, loosed barefoot in the woods, where the world wore the soft warm pelts we tumbled in, skins multicolored scarfs we slid out of, slid into, each other. We were hungering home.

2

I wore some long breezy skirt, thinking Stevie Nicks would approve; in those days music made our maps, At a party to honor the March stars, I sat in your lap on Alan’s floor, after too much tequila, naming fish, aquarium after aquarium lining old apartment walls. Outside, a vernal moon split the day in two perfect halves, calling the first point of my Aries into startling alignment with your laugh.

3

Thirty-one suns have crossed the celestial equator since then, science and memory rearranging, the Earth’s elliptical orbit, bending, changing, precession, axis tugged in another direction. Spring even now is being reduced by one minute per year, singing as it goes. Naked to the native acre, bone-clear, the body knows what it knows.

4

Age has freed us from any need to hide, that sweet surrender of knowing celestial objects near the celestial equator are visible worldwide.

5

Assuming the body as love, my body remembers—you sleepy-eyed and unshaven, hair long, lit by light breaking into that space, where we tangled like sweet-sweating animals. What we didn’t know then, spring sliding home into summer, we do now, having worn these faces, lived in these skins, long enough to comprehend gravity as grace.

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Make art about a solstice memory, about the body as grace.
lovers_silhouette-wallpaper-1280x800

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