As writers we naturally mine the depth of our own lives, both internal and external, for subject matter. Writing through your life experiences, trauma, or buried memories is often tough.

Ever since I began Bewilderness Writing in May of 2020, I have been astonished at the quality of writing in our groups. Whether experienced or beginning writers, we are all equal in our small group sessions, and doing the best we can to keep pen to the page in a guided free writing, prompted by a poem.

In order to write what I think of as a good poem, the poet has to “switch our lens” on how we see the world. I like the subject to be specific, as well as ordinary, and these women poets use the craft of poetry (feeling, story, language, line) to do just that.

Could we be open to the idea that the murky area lurking just below the conscious mind is wiser than the logical, planner-infested mind?

Port-man-teau: A large trunk or suitcase, typically made of stiff leather or a word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of others, for example “bewilderness”.

We’re celebrating in Bewilderness Writing with a month of one-line prompts for any kind of writing you choose, wherever the line might take you.

Written by Ellis Elliott. Inspired by “Ode to Fat” by Ellen Bass and the Academy Awards Ceremony

Featuring Guest Writer Janet Holmes Uchendu inspired by the poem I Go Back to May 1937 by Sharon Olds.

Inspired by Making a Fist by Naomi Shihab Nye, poem prompt from Bewilderness Writing.

Featured Guest Writer Tara Claeys based on poem prompt in Bewilderness Writing and “Tonsure” by Kevin Young.

Featured Guest Writer Christine Bates from her piece in Bewilderness Writing based on the poem “Offering” by Albert Garcia.

Featured Guest Writer Amy Appel from her piece in Bewilderness Writing based on the poem “Why I Write Poetry” by Major Jackson.

She comes, alongside the others in my adult ballet class, to claim her place at the barre. Our “barre” is a padded folding chair on the linoleum floor of the church’s fellowship hall.

We all find our preferred modes of expression, from tattoos to topiary artists. While they may seem totally different from the outside, they share a most important end result for me: the ability to communicate both with myself and with the outside world.

I crave the kind of solitude that can only be found in the quiet that invites my thoughts to marinate and my nervous system to ratchet down a few notches.

My first workshop outside our weekly writing groups will be about polishing our prose into poetry.

Welcome inside my very own curiosity cabinet filled with the artifacts of me, all with the intention to explain who I am.