Hey peeps! This is turning into a Fall full of productivity for me! I’m very excited to announce a new writers club that I’ve started with some friends. I tried to get one of these going with a couple of friends in February but we never made it past the first meeting! With a whopping TWO meetings under our belts and a third one scheduled in this incarnation, I venture to guess this one’s gonna stick.

Almost everyone I know (or don’t know) who likes to write has a hard time getting to the page. Work, play, “writer’s block,” easier things (cuz anything is easier than getting back to the 300 pages of novel that you abandoned 5 years ago…) always seem to get in the way. So, I bit the bullet and chatted up some friends. Quelle surprise! We all needed a li’l structure (read: peer pressure in a safe space) to get ourselves writing for pleasure again.

We are the Noteworthy Writers’ Squad!

We had our first meeting two weeks ago at my friend Christian’s house, where we established some drills, if you will, to make this thing as beneficial to us all as possible. We start each meeting by sharing our successes and “failures” since the last meeting and move onto a timed group exercise to get our juices flowing. Then we work on whatever we want for about 45 minutes, followed by another powwow. We leave each meeting with an assignment with specific criteria that each of us will complete, as well as an individual writing goal. Our first group assignment was to write a 500 word or less piece from a stranger’s perspective–a person who you encountered but never met and for some reason the encounter with the person stayed with you.

My personal goal was to write a poem following a poetic form since all of my poetry is prosaic and rarely follows any technical form. I chose to write a Bop, a poetic form created by Afaa Michael Weaver. According to poets.org,

Not unlike the Shakespearean sonnet in trajectory, the Bop is a form of poetic argument consisting of three stanzas, each stanza followed by a repeated line, or refrain, and each undertaking a different purpose in the overall argument of the poem.

The first stanza (six lines long) states the problem, and the second stanza (eight lines long) explores or expands upon the problem. If there is a resolution to the problem, the third stanza (six lines long) finds it. If a substantive resolution cannot be made, then this final stanza documents the attempt and failure to succeed.

[Read more here.]

It ended up pretty silly, but here it is!

DEEP

There aren’t enough seats in this
Subway car turned monster’s ball.
Stranger’s bag grazing my ass
Not so few times that I begin to
Wonder, could this be some weird
Sub-fetish, a new trend?

Practice your deep breathing.

A child speaks loudly, you can
Tell she’s on the brink. HOW
MANY MORE STOPS MOMMY? How
Many more stops mommy is right. Can’t
Even see where we just pulled in
Through all the arms, then the Tourist
Blares his attempting at brazenly comfortable conversation.
You’re not fooling anyone, buddy.

Practice your deep breathing.

A drop of sweat starts to descend,
Which will soon become a river. Its
Basin that sweet spot where undies meet
Sacrum, so steam slowly starts sliding from my
Ears as I hear the too polite voice announce
Bedford. A dam breaks. Fucking hipsters.

Practice your deep breathing.

We’ve agreed that it would be fun to put up some of our stuff on the interwebs, so keep your eyes peeled for the official launch of the Noteworthy Writers’ Squad site!

Been listening to a lot of Bessie this week. Enjoy!