Last night several local poets and I gave a panel for the Alaska Book Festival in which we each read poems of other Alaskan writers whose work we admired. It was fun and daunting. I had heard the poets I chose read their works many times–I know their voices, their cadences, the stories behind the poems, and the bits not spoken. How to read them and do them justice without preempting the other poets’ voices?
Along those lines, find a line or a phrase or a word from a poem written by someone whose work you admire and build your own around it. If it helps, break the phrase apart and use the words in a different sense than in the original. Let the poem take on your voice, with echoes of the other poet’s voice. If it helps, find an unsuspecting word like lupine or hail or sandhill crane or clutch cable find its way into the poem.
Send it as a comment to this post and I’ll post it here.
Mattie's Pillow 