Poetry: Clay Face

Clay Face

Here’s another in a series of short poems inspired by the National Writing Project’s Baltimore stop for its Write Across America project. This poem is inspired by the clay sculpture work of Paula Whaley — learn more about her with this video.

Peace (smoothed out),
Kevin

Poetry: Inspired By Tintype

Tintype Photography

Yesterday, I shared a few poems from the latest National Writing Project Write Across America Project (focus: Baltimore artists) and today’s poem is another piece inspired by that same collection. This time, it’s about Elena Volkova, who works with tintype photography on her Anacostia Portrait project.

Peace (Sitting and Waiting),
Kevin

NWP Write Across America: Baltimore

Home - Write Across America

The National Writing Project’s Write Across America place-based adventures continues into the school year, and I continue my practice of using the resources — when the resources get shared beyond the Zoom sessions that I nearly always miss — for some morning writing. This week, the project focused on artists in Baltimore, and it is a pretty fascinating collection.

Here are three poems (so far), inspired by three Baltimore artists and their work.

The first was from the work of Kathleen Fahey, who does old cranky-style videos, which are spooled stories that someone literally cranks to move along. Pretty cool and gives a story a forward motion.

A Tale Like This

The second poem came after exploring the work of Joyce Scott, who works with beads and glass and fabrics and more.

Beads

The third was focused on visual artist Ernest Shaw Jr., whose work is inspired by West African tradition and who does a variety of styles of art, including street murals. I listened to a video profile, taking notes on his words and then remixed his words into an art-themed poem.

In The Words of Ernest Shaw

Peace (in explorations of art),
Kevin

First Seed Stirs

This morning, I started reading ‘Thunder & Lightning (Weather Past, Present, Future)’ by Lauren Redniss (what a book of art and words and ideas!) and I stopped at the early passage about the Global Seed Vault to write and record a morning poem.

Text: https://write.as/dogtrax/the-middle-door-made-of-steel-glitters-with-ice-crystals

Book: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/93798c10-23be-4265-bc78-06a725c1683a

Peace (and Dirt),
Kevin

A Calendar of 25 Poems: Advent Of Love

I used mentor poems from my friend, Deanna, and wrote 25 poems each day from December 2 (I wrote two that first day, to catch up, after realizing the first day had passed me by) through the 25th, and then designed this calendar of links to the mentor text poems, my poems, and the visual version (each used an AI-generated image based on the context or words of my poem).

The embedded version of my calendar is compact and might be too small to be useful, so here is the link to the published version of the calendar.

My process: I would read each poem shared by Deanna each morning, mull over the mentor text, find a line or phrase, then build a poem off that idea. Next, I would go into Firefly AI and work to get an image based on my poem, and then use Pablo to layer the text of the poem with the AI imagery. Finally, I would come to my own calendar and update the day.

Peace (and writing),
Kevin