Cracker Jacks and other wins

I love winning stuff. 

A few bucks from a lottery scratch ticket.

The toy surprise in the Cracker Jack box. 

A raffle for something I don't even want — a quilt, a side of beef, free tire rotation. 

Even if the 'win' is more luck than skill, my heart trills at the idea of a perk. (I'm the one at Chipolte who stuffs the glass bowl with my business cards.) The luck! The chance! The fate! 

I'm even more pleased when winning is a result of real skill. In an effort to spread the good vibration of winning-hood, I encourage you to enter the following contests (and please note, the prizes are bigger than a burrito):

The Life Poetic iPoem Contest
Submit up to three, unpublished poems that you feel represent the spirit of "the life poetic." Winning poems will be featured on the "Life Poetic" iPhone app that features a poem a day for a year. Additional prizes include free tuition to a poetry class, signed books, and manuscript consultation. Deadline: August 8, 2010. 
Details here. 

Seven Hills & Penumbra Contests
In their annual contests, Tallahassee Writers Association offers cash prizes and publication. Open to writers of short story, creative nonfiction, children's stories, poetry and haiku. Deadline: August 31, 2010.
Details here. 

Feeling lucky? Find more contests at Practicing Writing, a blog by writer Erika Dreifus. Each week she posts a plethora of leads on Monday Morning Markets/Jobs/Opportunities. 

Thankful Thursday: Lists & Reasons

Reasons for Loving Bellybuttons

Because it is fun to say. 

Because everyone has one. 

Because when I was a baby I liked to play with it. 

Because it is fun to poke. 

Because I like to draw a happy face on it and make it talk. 

 — Kenzie, age 10

I have been buzzing about town with a group of lively 10, 11 and 12 year-olds. It's Summer Camp at Seashore Family Literacy and this week we are collecting words, observing life, and writing, writing, writing.

We are never without our journals, and just occasionally without smiles (when, after several hours, exhausted with words, we retreat to solitude and food). 

Today we were lucky to have poet Ann Staley visit us from Corvallis, Oregon, an hour-plus drive from valley to sea. Ann has taught writing and poetry for over 40 years, and she spent the morning leading our group through a variety of poems and prompts.

The driving force of the day was lists (Things I Love), reasons (Reasons for Loving . . .) and instructions (How To . . .). From these lists, we generated pages and pages of poems.  

Just as with gratitude, the more you appreciate, the more you see to appreciate. The Things I Love lists grew from 10 to 20 to more. "It's kinda fun once you get the hang of it," said Kenzie, as she reached 50 items.

For the How-To poems, we were inspired by How to See Deer by Phillip Booth. I was moved by Chrisanda's sweetly direct instructions: 

How to Make a Friend

First, you start by saying

Hi, my name is . . . . 

What's your name? 

Then be nice to them. 

— Chrisanda, age 11

Writing with children is almost always invigorating. Today I felt especially grateful for their willingness to try new things and to write about the silly and the sacred — from birth moms, to bellybuttons, to barbecue ribs. 

How to Love

Pick a weed

Admire its long stalk and strong pull

Its roots bound to bad soil

to gloom, rain and hard scrabble

Find a flower with a delicate bloom

Examine how it 

bends to sun

shakes in wind

How it needs tending and care

water and light

How it needs so much more 

than you can give and

still, and still, it lives

— Drew Myron 

Practice makes poems

Between writing groups and summer camps, I'm in the thick of word games and writing practice. 

I love writing exercises. Prompts stretch my creative muscle and rev up my writing. Fortunately, the world is full of writing books. My shelves are lined with inspiration but there's a handful of favorites I turn to again and again. Here are my top picks: 

poemcrazy
by Susan Wooldridge

This book rings with joyful ideas, whimsy and pluck. Best of all, Wooldridge mixes practicality with possibility. I have used her suggestions for years. Kids love creating Word Tickets for the Word Pool. And when my writing feels dulled and lazy, poemcrazy restores my love of words. 

Writing Down the Bones
by Natalie Goldberg

The classic how-to on freewriting. My friend Valerie gave me this book years ago, long before I thought I could or would ever be a 'real' writer, and I am forever grateful to enter the world of wild mind writing. I've bought this book 10 times over because I keep giving it away. 

The Practice of Poetry 
by Robin Behn & Chase Twichell

Packed with writing exercises from poets who teach. I've had the book for years and still haven't worked through all of the prompts. It's been carted through the desert, dropped in the bathtub, and has yellowed in the sun — and still holds its value. And it's not just for poets; Many of the prompts can be easily applied to fiction writing.  

What have I missed?
When you need a prompt or a boost, what books lead the way? 

Thankful Thursday

Welcome Morning

There is joy 

in all: 

in the hair I brush each morning, 

in the Cannon towel, newly washed, 

that I rub my body with each morning, 

in the chapel of eggs I cook 

each morning, 

in the outcry from the kettle 

that heats my coffee 

each morning, 

in the spoon and the chair 

that cry "hello there, Anne" 

each morning, 

in the godhead of the table 

that I set my silver, plate, cup upon 

each morning.

All this is God, 

right here in my pea-green house 

each morning 

and I mean, 

though often forget, 

to give thanks, 

to faint down by the kitchen table 

in a prayer of rejoicing 

as the holy birds at the kitchen window 

peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it, 

let me paint a thank-you on my palm 

for this God, this laughter of the morning, 

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard, 

dies young.

— Anne Sexton
from The Awful Rowing Toward God
 

Half my life ago, I clung to the confessionals: Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, poets who wrote openly about their struggles with life and the strong pull of death. Like many sad young women, I took Sexton's poem, Wanting to Die, as my own sort of prayer. I traced the lines, knew its terrain as my own:

But suicides have a special language.

Like carpenters they want to know which tools.

They never ask why build. 

I eventually grew up, and sometimes out, of suicidal contemplations. I grew away, too, from the raw, tell-all quality of confessional poets. I began, instead, to hedge and allude. Where once I was direct, I became vague, my emotional edges blunted. It's an evolution I question daily. 

Is it the nature of age to soften with time? Today when I read Welcome Morning, I find a new Anne Sexton. One, like me, who sees variation in the gray. For this discovery, I am very thankful. 

On the street, in the dark

Corvallis, Oregon