For National Poetry Month, I’m writing poems inspired by words, ideas, and images in Virginia Woolf’s Diary.
One of the most helpful resources I’ve turned to this month is The Writer’s Greenhouse, which offers a daily poetry prompt via email and also has this set of 16 poetry forms to try out (scroll down to find it). I was feeling deeply uninspired and stuck this morning, but trying out a new form often provides a doorway of escape from poetry block.
Today, I’m experimenting with a Pleiades, a form I’d never heard of. Invented by Craig Tigerman, it’s a seven-line poem with a one-word title, and each line of the poem must begin with a word that starts with the same letter as the title word. Hortensia Anderson added an optional further constraint: six-syllable lines.
As for the title and topic, I decided to choose more or less at random, opening the Diary to my current page and entry and choosing the first noun. This is what the Diary provided: “Habits gradually change the face of ones life as time changes one’s physical face; & one does not know it.”
Day #19: Habits
hardly poetical,
however practical–
humble, unheralded
human routines; vital
heart of a writing life;
hearth where hope is kindled
healing hours of work
the dirigible plum 
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