Self-Portrait as a Door - a writing prompt based on Donika Ross's poem
Plus last chance to claim your 10% discount on annual subscription! New course begins next week!
My new course What to Look for in Summer begins on 5th July, next Friday (how is it nearly July already?!) The course is free to subscribers of Notes from the Margin, and you can get a 10% discount on an annual subscription if you sign up before Sunday.
The course is all about noticing and responding to what you see in Summer. Alternatively, if you didn’t want to sign up to Notes from the Margin, you can buy a spot on the course for just £25, and find out more details here: Website
I don’t believe that writers should be reliant on prompts to get them writing, I feel that a good writing prompt should help to give a writer confidence in their own ability to find the unique viewpoint that only they can write.
The creative act is not a party trick, it is a deep seated evolutionary need that, although not everybody can take to professional level, everybody is capable of. I think we lose sight of that, sometimes, in a world utterly swamped with voices, comparison and competition. My courses, my workshops, my methods tend to focus these days on the act of creation itself, as a catalyst, as well as a career. My style is holistic - finding the interconnectedness between the writer and their work. Sometimes that is less obvious than it should be.
In the next couple of months I’ll be launching a couple of new things on my substack, and outside of my substack, that really home in on those values, as I develop my substack base, my mentoring services, retreats (exciting - keep an eye open for this!) and courses around these core principles.
Enough waffle now, I promised a writing prompt, and you shall have one.
Have a look at this poem by Donika Ross
Self-Portrait as a Door
Donika Ross
All the birds die of blunt force trauma—
of barn of wire of YIELD or SLOW
CHILDREN AT PLAY. You are a sign
are a plank are a raft are a felled oak.
You are a handle are a turn are a bit
of brass lovingly polished.
What birds what bugs what soft
hand come knocking. What echo
what empty what room in need
of a picture a mirror a bit of paint
on the wall. There is a hooked rug
There is a hand hard as you are hard
pounding the door. There is the doormat
owl eye patched by a boot by a body
with a tree for a hand. What roosts
what burrows what scrambles
at the pound. There is a you
on the other side, cold and white
as the room, in need of a window
or an eye. There is your hand
on the door which is now the door
pretending to be a thing that opens.
You can read the poem on the Tupelo Quartely website.
This is a poem that leaves a lot unanswered. But it is not a poem that asks questions of the reader. It is not asking you to solve its puzzle, it is simply existing in many different forms, as a door will.
This poem has real power. There is a relentlessness to the shape shifting wood. The door becomes a metaphor for other experiences. But what does a door represent? An entrance, a barrier?
Self portrait poems are an interesting vehicle, a kind of ultimate metaphor. I think every writer has a self portrait poem in them. My next collection with Nine Arches does. That might make them feel a little clichéd, but a cliché is only a cliché if it’s unoriginal, and a structural device (in this case a self portrait poem) can’t be a cliché in itself.
Writing Prompt
I want you to find an inanimate object in your house and write a poem that is a self-portrait of yourself as that object. The object should NOT be a personal object, it should be an everyday, anyone-could-own-this object - a fork, a broom, a bed, a rug, a window… The personal must come from the metaphor, from the poem that you build around it, from your personal viewpoint.
What does your object represent? Think about the object physically, but also think about the object’s purpose and how you might express a sense of self through that purpose and how that might be expressed in the context of others who share your life and your living space, and your object.
The Door poem is about the door as a barrier, it becomes a metaphor for all the things that are either on one side of the door, or the other. How can you use your chosen object to respond to your own experiences. For example, if you choose a vase: a vase is a container for water, the water has no shape of its own. Are you a container for something or someone else, are you the shape that someone else wants you to be?
If you are a paid member of Notes from the Margin, why not post your answer to this prompt in the Facebook page?
Book Recommendations
I was recently asked to write a list of book recommendations for the bookshop.org.
Here’s the link to the article: Books by Women Writers Exploring the Connection Between the Internal and External Landscape
The Ghost Lake
And since it’s now only SEVEN WEEKS to the launch of The Ghost Lake publication day, I’ll share with you this quote by
And a link to pre order my book: Pre order
Did you know you can request a pre over from your local library? Libraries are an essential part of the community, I wouldn’t be a writer without my local library.
Until next time
x