Art FLASH! / 55 in December

As this is the last Art FLASH! prompt in The Imaginary Garden with Real Toads, and in response to a recent request, I am sharing my own art in the form of Oracle Cards I made with a few of my paintings from October/Inktober 2019.

Oracle Cards are simply a tool that offers a way to focus your intuition so you can tune into spiritual guidance and insight. They are cards that we can use to access our own source of inner Divine wisdom, spiritual guidance and insight. Read MORE.

Pharos ~ The Lighthouse
Kerry O'Connor
@skyloverpoetry

The first card I am sharing, I have named Pharos after the first lighthouse constructed in the city of Alexandria, Egypt and one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
The symbolism of any tower is dual at its core: on the one hand it is phallic, mighty, erect, denoting power and spirit reaching from the earth to the heavens. On the other hand, it is feminine, reminiscent of an enclosed area, a walled sanctuary, and a safe haven. The Tower of Ivory was one of the names given to the Virgin Mary in her protective role of offering refuge and comfort. Read MORE.

Pacifico ~ The Pacific Ocean
Kerry O'Connor
@skyloverpoetry

Since this is December, and we are approaching the end of the Real Toads cycle, I am offering this bonus card: Pacifico. The name 'Pacifico' is a version of 'pacify' or 'peaceful'. It was named by the explorer Ferdinand Magellan in 1520 as he sailed through a calm patch of water on the ocean. Despite its name, the Pacific is a vast body of water teeming with activity and still waiting to be explored. Read MORE.


For this challenge you may select either of the cards (or both) and write an original poem for this prompt. Let the cards speak to you and guide your pen to write something:  Literal! Figurative! Reflective! Narrative! Symbolic!

As an alternative, you may write a Flash Fiction 55 inspired by the art, or on a subject of your choice, in memory of Galen, who first imagined this challenge.
Prose is acceptable but must be within the limit of 55 words!


If you repost the image on your blog, please give attribution to yours truly,  Kerry O'Connor, using the following link: https://www.instagram.com/skyloverpoetry/

If you post your poem on Instagram, using either image, please tag me @skyloverpoetry.

The prompt is open all weekend, and please feel free to enter two poems to the Linky below, if you feel inspired to write to both.

Art FLASH / 55 in November

For this month's art collaboration, Jason Limberg, an artist from Michigan, USA, has returned to the Imaginary Garden to share his graphite sketch, entitled 'Autumn Breath'.

Autumn Breath
Jason Limberg
Used With Permission

 Jason describes his imagery thus: "A drawing that makes me think about crisp fall mornings & colorful leaves." He also asks his audience what they think the reindeer is whispering to his companion.


If you repost the image on your blog, please give attribution to Jason, using the following link: https://www.instagram.com/jasonlimberg/

Feel free to pay a visit to @jasonlimberg on Instagram or the Jason Limberg website where more of his amazing pieces are to be viewed, but not used for this prompt.

If you post your poem on Instagram, using Jason's image, please tag @jasonlimberg and mention him as the collaborative artist in your post.

There are no restrictions placed on this challenge: Let the image speak to you and respond in a poetic or prose form of your choosing: Literal! Figurative! Reflective! Narrative! Symbolic!

Kerry Says ~ What is Metamodernism?

I recently read a most informative essay by Seth Abramson, an assistant professor of English at University of New Hampshire on The Huffington Post, which I am referencing in today's prompt.

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whatismetamodern.com
I recommend you check out this site...

"Metamodernism, a term first coined in 1975 by Mas’ud Zavarzadeh (as an alternative to the term Post Postmodernism), has been in the news a lot lately. It’s a word academics periodically used throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, but it’s only lately become the sort of thing regularly discussed on popular websites like 4chan, Reddit, and Twitter... So what is metamodernism?
Well, first and most importantly, you should understand that it’s a 'cultural philosophy'. This means that it’s a system for understanding the world. Sometimes the sort of understanding metamodernism offers us is a logical understanding of how and why things happen during this particular period in human history."

Shia LaBeouf's Art Performance, 'I am not famous anymore' is considered to be a cutting-edge example of Metamodernism. 

"In this sense, we can see metamodernism as a “system of logic” that helps us better navigate the digital age. At other times, metamodernism helps us understand our emotional reactions to things that are happening now—both our reaction as individuals, and the reactions of whole communities and even nations—at which point we can see metamodernism as a 'structure of feeling'."

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The Hampton Institute
An enlightening article: 'Black Metamodernism'

"Metamodernism is likely to take something you’re certain is bad and show you that it’s an opportunity to do something you never imagined before... It’s likely to say crazy things like the fact that we live in a 'post-truth' culture gives us an opportunity to instrumentalize that very culture in the service of—you guessed it—Truth."

'This Is America' by Childish Gambino is a great example of Metamodernism in music.

"Digital culture is really important to the spread of metamodernism.... The internet lets us quickly overlap and combine things to create new things in a way we never could before..."

In a sense, I believe we poets of the blogosphere have been forerunners and mainstream proponents of metamodernism, perpetuating it in our collective efforts to reach a wider audience and creating our own cultural philosophy about poetry as an art form. Thus, anything we write is already part of the movement. Seth Abramson mentions the following:

"Key terms in metamodernism are dialogue, reconstruction, collaboration, interdisciplinary and transmedia work (collaborations across academic disciplines or creative genres/modes), inter- and hyper-textuality (the creation of new texts through the interaction of existing texts), generative paradox, generative ambiguity, simultaneity, engagement rather than exhibitionism, and, more broadly, the collapsing of artificial distances between concepts and people."

In the decade in which we, as a collective of 'toads' have been writing and inspiring one another to write, have we not fulfilled all the criteria? So the prompt for today is to write a poem. That is it. Write a poem. And while writing it, be cognizant of the fact that you are the voice of a new culture of literature/art/communication and that your voice, your point of view and your philosophy of human relations, here and now, is part of something much bigger than yourself which, paradoxically, cannot exist without you.

Art FLASH! / 55 in October

For this weekend's art collaboration, I am introducing an illustrator in ink and purveyor of magic, McMonster, a perfect choice to set the tone for October.

McMonster has developed a unique style of painting with ink and has created a surreal world. As he describes it: Story telling with no narrative.
Take a look at this 1 minute clip, which encapsulates his process.





McMonster has kindly given permission for us to use the following piece for our poetic collaboration:

Commissioned Piece (Untitled)
@mc__monster
Used with Permission

If you repost the image on your blog, please give attribution to McMonster, using the following link:
https://www.instagram.com/mc__monster/

Feel free to pay him a visit on Instagram, where more of his artworks are to be viewed, but not used for this prompt, or follow this link to his AllMyLinks Page.

If you post your poem on Instagram, using McMonser's image, please tag @mc__monster (double underscore) and mention him as the collaborating artist in your post.

Let the image speak to you and respond in a poetic form of your choosing:
Literal! Figurative! Reflective! Narrative! Symbolic!

As an alternative, you may write a Flash Fiction 55 inspired by the art, or on a subject of your choice, in memory of Galen, who first imagined this challenge. Prose is acceptable but must be within the limit of 55 words!

I wish to remind all participants that this linky does not expire and the post remains open and at the top of the page until Monday. If you link early, please return to read other poems linked up after your own.

Art FLASH / 55

For this weekend's art collaboration, I am introducing an illustrator in mixed media, Cat Schappach, who is a marvel of dark surrealism. She has kindly given permission for us to use her piece entitled Seamstress.

Seamstress
@catschappach

If you repost the image on your blog, please give attribution to Cat, using the following link: https://www.instagram.com/catschappach/

Feel free to pay her a visit on Instagram, where more of her artworks are to be viewed, but not used for this prompt, or follow this link to her Etsy page.

If you post your poem on Instagram, using Cat's image, please tag @catschappach and mention her as the collaborating artist in your post.

Let the image speak to you and respond in a poetic form of your choosing: Literal! Figurative! Reflective! Narrative! Symbolic!

As an alternative, you may write a Flash Fiction 55 inspired by the art, or on a subject of your choice, in memory of Galen, who first imagined this challenge. Prose is acceptable but must be within the limit of 55 words!

From September, the weekend challenge will post early on Friday. I wish to remind all participants that this linky does not expire and the post remains open and at the top of the page until Monday. If you link early, please return to read other poems linked up after your own.

Micro Poetry ~ Fill The Empty Parts

The object of this challenge is to write a poem in no more than 10 lines (but you may write in fewer than 10 lines all the way down to a single American sentence). Choose your own form or write in free verse, if preferred. We are taking inspiration today from Rupi Kaur, using the reference: 'fill the empty parts...'

Copyright Rupi Kaur
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More examples of the poet's work may be viewed on Instagram @rupikaur. I look forward to reading a number of short poems. The link does not expire, so please feel free to write more than one poem, and a return to comment on poems linked later would be appreciated.

Kerry Says ~ Human-Landscape Interactions

I have long been fascinated with art and creative writing, not only as a means of self-expression, but also as a clue to certain psychological structures within the minds of both artist and audience.
Starry Night is, perhaps, an obvious example of this, which is why the painting has remained relevant.

Starry Night - Vincent Van Gogh

We, as the audience, 'see ourselves' in the way other people portray the world. Lately, I have been considering how that can also be applied to the way we perceive the actual world around us, the landscape or geography which we inhabit or which we feel drawn to. Do we recognize something of ourselves in favourite places?

In researching my idea, I read some interesting theories, which I share here to create some context for today's challenge.

"We wanted to explore how the surrounding landscape affects people, both in terms of their perceptions and their behavior," explains Scott Yabiku (ASU). "Since human behavior ultimately transforms the environment, the feedback people get from their surroundings is important to understand."


Human-landscape interactions, also often described as nature-society or human-environment interactions, is a topic examined by multiple disciplines.. Major theories that link culture and landscape address how environments affect the development of cultures, how cultural activities impact environments, and how interactions in both directions are processed through perceptions and cultural values that are also linked to identity. Source

In Book 1 of William Wordsworth's poem The Prelude, the poet 'describes stealing a boat and taking it for a row on Ullswater. The mixed feelings this act arouses lead to the young Wordsworth feeling pursued by the landscape – the mountains even haunt his dreams.'

I fixed my view
Upon the summit of a craggy ridge,
The horizon's utmost boundary; far above
Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.
She was an elfin pinnace; lustily
I dipped my oars into the silent lake,
And, as I rose upon the stroke, my boat
Went heaving through the water like a swan;
When, from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon's bound, a huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing,
Strode after me. With trembling oars I turned,
And through the silent water stole my way
Back to the covert of the willow tree...   (An extract from The Prelude, Book 1, William Wordsworth)

My idea for today's challenge is that we select a natural place with which we are familiar, or select a picture/photograph of a scene which has some meaning to convey about our own ideology, philosophy, psychology and to write about it in a way to transform the descriptive into something more metaphoric or symbolic to the human condition. Thus our journey to this place is both an outward and inward reflection of experience.

The Japanese Bridge - Claude Monet

Take for example, this famous scene, and ask: What does the bridge suggest to you? Do willows trailing in a lily pond have added significance to your own memories?

I believe the challenge will be easier if you feel connected to a particular landscape, but I believe it could also work if you choose a mountain range, sea shore, forest setting, so long as it appeals to your way of thinking. Here I am sharing a poem I wrote back in 2010, recently handwritten in ink, which shows the link between melancholy and the immediate environment.

@skyloverpoetry

I hope that this challenge is broad enough to encourage participation. I do wish for it to be as open-ended as possible to invite various unique responses. So I leave you with the idea, but no distinctive 'rules' of engagement.

Art FLASH!

Greetings to all poets! After the fervour of poetry writing in April, I expect that many of us are taking a break from participation in challenges. But for those who find themselves in the mood for a collaboration this weekend, I am offering one of my own pieces for your inspiration today.

Recently, I have been delving in my long neglected pastime of painting and drawing in the medium of ink and combining it with poetry. One of my best loved themes is Dystopian, and I have done a series of Tarot cards, with a twist. This is my favourite: The Lovers.

The Dystopian Tarot, The Lovers
Kerry O'Connor

If you repost the image on your blog, please give attribution using the link to my blog: https://kerryoconnorsother.blogspot.com/
If you post your poem on Instagram, using this image, please tag @skyloverpoetry.

My other cards can be viewed at This Rough Magic.


There are no restrictions placed on this challenge: Let the image speak to you and respond in a poetic or prose form of your choosing: Literal! Figurative! Reflective! Narrative! Symbolic!

Art FLASH / 55

For this weekend's art collaboration, I am introducing Tomasz Zaczeniuk surreal artist and photographer from Poland. Tomasz has kindly given permission for us to use his amazing piece,The Temple, for our poetic inspiration.

A completely unreal vision from the Polish coastline. It took me a decent few hours to create this with around 20-25 layers.

The Temple by Tomasz Zaczeniuk
Used with permission
@fotowizjer

If you repost the image on your blog, please give attribution to Tomasz, using the following link:
https://www.instagram.com/fotowizjer/

Feel free to pay Tomasz a visit on Instagram or check out his website, FotoWizjer, where more of his amazing pieces are to be viewed, but not used for this prompt.

If you post your poem on Instagram, using Tomasz's image, please tag @fotowizjer and mention him as the collaborative artist in your post.

There are no restrictions placed on this challenge: Let the image speak to you and respond in a poetic or prose form of your choosing:
Literal! Figurative! Reflective! Narrative! Symbolic!

As an alternative, you may write a Flash 55 inspired by the photograph, or on a subject of your choice, in memory of Galen, who first imagined this challenge.

Instructions for Living a Life ~ A Tribute to Poets of Our Time

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. ~ Mary Oliver


January 2019 is the month when the world lost the voice that will always be Mary Oliver. The death of a poet, one of our time, always strikes a chill of fear into my heart..
I ask the question: Who remains? In compiling this writing prompt, I initially had in mind a way in which we could all pay tribute to a poet who inspired with her gentle wisdom and perception of the human condition, but we have been given the opportunity to do so already in other posts.

Then I got to thinking: Why do we only really Pay Attention to a poet's body of work once they have passed away? So I returned to my question: Who remains? Who is the poet - still living -  who speaks to you in a profound way? Therefore, for this challenge, I wish you to share a quote from a contemporary poet's work and write a poem as a tribute to his/her style, voice, themes, wisdom.

"I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.

In words, like weeds, I'll wrap me o'er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more.”

― Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam

Here are a few poets to consider, but please feel free to choose your own favourite and follow Mary Oliver's advice: Be astonished. Tell about it.

Margaret Atwood

Jane Hirshfield

Robert Bly

W.S. Merwin

Billy Collins

Roger McGough

Camera FLASH! 55

It is time to strike a pose with our photographic challenge for December.

Jessie Tarbox Beals
America's first female photojournalist
c. 1904

This challenge comes with a wide angle and any filter of your choosing.

Literal! Figurative! Reflective! Narrative!

As an added extra to this challenge, you may write a Flash 55 inspired by the photograph, or on a subject of your choice, as we keep the memory of Galen alive, and send our love and support to Hedgewitch, during her time off from hosting.

Kerry Says ~ How Does the Story End?

A REAL TOAD QUIZ!

Can you identify the poem by its last line?

1. "And - which is more - you'll be a man, my son!"

2. "Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

3. "And thus they buried Hector, tamer of horses."

4. "So long lives this and this gives life to thee."

5. "sun moon stars rain"

A. anyone lived in a pretty how town - e.e. cummings

B. Iliad - Homer

C. Ode on a Grecian Urn - John Keats

D. Sonnet 18 - William Shakespeare

E. If - Rudyard Kipling

I am sure you all got 5/5... Gold Stars all round!!🌟

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost
Where title is the final line of the poem.

Often, the hardest part of writing a poem, is the creation of a memorable final line. The value of a strong conclusion is evident, but sometimes it is also elusive, and a poem with a great opening line, fades away at the end, or just comes to a dead stop.

Here are five helpful tips I picked up while browsing a few articles online.

1. Write your last line first. This creates suspense, and is a hook with a thread attached to the theme you will explore in the remainder of the poem. You can circle back to the first line at the end, if you wish, or rephrase it in such a way that it reverberates with the central idea.

2. Ask a question. This involves the audience more actively in the reading process. It also suggests that the poem does not end at that point, it continues in the imagination of the reader, who will ponder the theme more closely.

3. Create a dichotomy. End your poem with a line that contradicts or contrasts, the body of the poem, in mood, tone or imagery. This can create a lot of impact in the reader's mind.

4. Use your title as leverage. The title of your poem is a clue to its subject. Save the reveal for the final line.

5. Choose your best line and repeat it at the end. Repetition is an integral part of poetry. By repeating an essential phrase or line at the end, you reinforce the main idea of your poem.

The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot

For today's challenge, please select one of the above suggestions and write a new poem with a killer last line.

  

Micro Poetry ~ A Poem Lovely As

The object of this challenge is to write a poem of between one and twelve lines, in a form of your choice.
Our point of departure is the line: 'A poem lovely as...'

Kerry Says ~ What is Spec Fic?

Source

Speculative Fiction (Spec Fic) is an umbrella genre encompassing narrative fiction with supernatural or futuristic elements. This includes, but not limited to, science fiction, fantasy, superhero fiction, science fantasy, horror, utopian and dystopian fiction, supernatural fiction as well as their combinations... What is now called speculative fiction has previously been termed "historical invention", "historical fiction", and similar names.

dylancole on DeviantArt
sourced on pinterest
(Fair Use)

It is extensively noted in literary criticism of the works of William Shakespeare as when he co-locates Athenian Duke, Theseus and Amazonian Queen, Hippolyta; English fairy, Puck, and Roman god, Cupid across time and space in the Fairyland of its Merovingian Germanic sovereign, Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Read more HERE (Source: Wikipedia).

Source

In researching this genre, I came across an interesting article with tips from authors of Spec Fic, which might be of use when we adapt the method to the writing of poetry. You may click on this LINK to take a look.

Further more, 10 Songs That Are Basically SF/F Novels in Music Form may also be of help.

OUR CHALLENGE: Write a poem which incorporates elements of Spec Fic in a narrative, descriptive or ideological way. (In other words, any way that suits you.) No limits or parameters.

Camera FLASH!

It is time to strike a pose again. Here is your photographic challenge for May.

The Cup - Adolf de Meyer (1912)
Fair Use Principles

This challenge comes with a wide angle and any filter of your choosing.

Camera FLASH!

It is time to strike a pose again. Here is your photographic challenge for February.

Crepuscule
Heinrich Kuhn (1897)

This challenge comes with a wide angle and any filter of your choosing.

The Poem as a One-Sided Conversation

Ever get the feeling you're talking to yourself?

Maybe you have long conversations with yourself....

Every Morning

I read the papers.
I unfold them and examine them in the sunlight.
The way the red mortars, in photographs,
arc down into neighborhoods
like stars, the way death
combs everything into a grey rubble before 
the camera moves on. What
dark part of my soul 
shivers: you don't want to know more 
about this. And then: you don't know anything
unless you do...

Read More of this poem by Mary Oliver.


Or say a lot but no one was listening?

Gertrude Stein by Pablo Picasso
Copyright of Meme: Stefan Stenudd
Fair Use

Today, I wish for us to celebrate the poem as a one-sided conversation, written for a silent and even disinterested audience, because poetry is an aspect of individual creativity that goes beyond literary appreciation or criticism. We write because we think and the act of setting the words down shows that these thoughts matter, maybe to ourselves alone, maybe to someone else who happens to read them.

A Skyflower Friday: Goodbye

Greetings to all in the Imaginary Garden!

Farewell ~ Ivan Aivazovsky (1895)

As another year comes to its natural conclusion, it may be time for some goodbyes - some important part of yourself may have to be left behind in 2017 or perhaps there is cause for a pruning of old, dead weight to make way for new growth and opportunities which lie ahead. Very few of us can say goodbye without regret or some measure of pain. I would like you to use these ideas as a springboard for your poem today.

I leave you with the famous quote from Romeo and Juliet:

'Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.'

And a music video

A Skyflower Friday: Monsters

Kerry here, standing in for Shay, with a Fireblossom Friday flavoured challenge.

Sadko the Green Monster
Leon Bakst (1917)

Today I am asking you to write a poem about a monster or monsters, be they real or imagined, mythical or made up, symbolic, surreal, abstract, nightmare or waking reality. You get the idea, I am sure.

I leave you with the famous words spoken by Iago in Othello:

"O beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meet it feeds on,"

And a music video..

Literary Excursions with Kerry ~ Metafiction

Greetings to all friends and poets. I continue, with this challenge, to give more focus to the skill of using literary devices , with particular interest in those developed during the modern and post-modern time-frame.

Reading a Book
James Tissot
Fair Use

Metafiction is a narrative technique and a genre of fiction, wherein a fictional work (novel, film, play, poem, etc.) self-consciously draws attention to being a work of imagination, rather than a work of non-fiction. Metafiction poses critical questions about the relation between fiction and reality, usually by applying irony and self-reflection. As a genre, metafiction is comparable to presentational theatre, which continually reminds the audience that they are viewing a play; metafiction continually reminds the reader to be aware that he or she is reading a fictional work. [Continue reading HERE] It became prominent in the 1960s with the publication of such novels as Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.

Instead of making this idea seem very difficult to contemplate, I hope that we can have some fun with it. Take a good look at the means by which we write poetry (and why we do it) and approach it from a slightly different angle. Truth be told, anything goes.