When I struggle to find the right words—when my thoughts feel like a tangled ball of yarn—found poetry helps me unravel them. Whether through blackout poetry, erasure, or piecing together lines from old letters and newspapers, it’s a playful and meditative way to reconnect with language and rediscover creativity.

I had grand goals to write about fun writing exercises to play with bypassing the conscious mind, as is our intention in Bewilderness Writing. It’s one of my favorite subjects. I read up, made an outline, and sat down to write. And, then, I just couldn’t do it.

Ode to Sharon Olds’ “Ode to the Creature from the Black Lagoon” by Regina Dilgen

I recently interviewed Morgan Golladay, a writer and artist who published her first book, The Song of North Mountain, in May. The path of a person coming fully into their creative life at a later age is rarely linear and usually filled with interesting stories. Morgan is no exception.

Featured Student Writing: The Answer is in the Question (in response to Margaret Walker's "Lineage") by Christie Bates.

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.

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.

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