For National Poetry Month, I am writing poems inspired by words, ideas, and images in Virginia Woolf’s Diary. Today I decided to try a Pablo Neruda style ode, inspired by this passage in the Diary: This is written, as many pages in the past used to be written, to try a new pen; for I…

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…

For National Poetry Month, I’m writing poems inspired by words, ideas, and images in Virginia Woolf’s Diary. Of course what readers find most interesting in the Diaries are not the constant round of teas, dinners, lunches, parties, or the cranky and occasionally cruel comments about friends and acquaintances but the insight into Woolf’s art. She…

For National Poetry Month, I am writing poems inspired by words, ideas, and images in Virginia Woolf’s Diary. The passage I’m working from today: “We drove home very fast. I on the other hand took in favour of Barbara–& wished I had gone up alone with her on to the downs.” Day #17: Contrast virginia…

For National Poetry Month, I’m writing poems inspired by words, ideas, and images in Virginia Woolf’s Diary. Today’s poem is an elevenie, a five-line poem consisting of just eleven words. Learn more about the form at The Writers’ Greenhouse. The line that inspired me in Woolf: “All these tasks are unworthy the sacred morning hours.”…

For National Poetry Month, I’m writing poems inspired by words, ideas, and images from Virginia Woolf’s Diary. Today I’m writing off this passage in the Diary: “The clouds–if I could describe them I would.” Day #15: Clouds There is no collective noun for clouds. Did Wordsworth notice that clouds rarely travel alone? They gather in…

For National Poetry Month, I’m writing poems inspired by words, ideas, and images in Virginia Woolf’s Diary. In spring 1928, Virginia Woolf finished writing Orlando, a novel she began as a lark, “a joke,” and then finished “seriously.” It’s fascinating to follow her process and thinking through an entire book: the lighthearted, high-spirited fun as…

For National Poetry Month, I am writing poems inspired by words, passages, and images in Virginia Woolf’s Diary. For this poem, a line I’d copied in my notebook from my current bedtime reading, Adkady Martine’s sci-fi novel, A Memory Called Empire, happened to be juxtaposed with a line I’d copied from the Diary. I liked…

For National Poetry Month, I’m writing poems inspired by words, passages, and images in Virginia Woolf’s Diary. Today’s poem is a sedoka, which I decided to double into a short string of four stanzas. A sedoka is a Japanese form made up of two katautas. A katauta is a three-line poem with a 5/7/7 syllable…

For National Poetry Month, I am writing poems inspired by words, sentences, and images in Virginia Woolf’s Diary. Yesterday we went for a walk in Wind Cave National Park. There is no green yet to prairie grasses, and I didn’t think there was anything visibly growing. But when I left the path to give an…