At a reading a few months ago, one of my professors was introducing the visiting writer, Bhanu Kapil. I was distracted by a flash of pink from Bhanu's chair. She was ripping the petals off a pale pink rose and cramming them into her mouth, chewing, then spitting them out. She then sank off the chair, crawled towards the podium and rose up from behind it like a sea monster breaching the waves. There were some giggles, but I thought back to the Q&A we'd had with her a few hours ago.


Bhanu Kapil researches through the body. She went through a phase where she did performance art to feed into her writing. She once lay on a table in a red silk sack, while her audience stood outside, the sound of a knife being sharpened echoing from a hidden speaker system. If my memory is correct, that research helped her write about women's bodies often being viewed as pieces of meat.


Researching (and writing) through the body is different from writing about the body (equally valuable; here's a prompt I wrote). When you write about the body, the act of writing is still centered. When you write through the body, writing springs from the body, centering the body instead. Now, this doesn't exactly jive with Descartes' philosophy of "I think, therefore I am," and one that's implicitly gaining increasing popularity as we move from an economy and lifestyle geared around physical labor to one that's geared around mental and intellectual labor, but it can be a source of tremendous creative energy. Given the right topic, in fact, writing through the body can be much more productive than plain old writing.


So, since we here at Floodmark are all about inspiration and endless surprise, give this a try and you might find yourself, well, surprised.

1. Find the right topic. It would be difficult (though not impossible) to write about, say, the color blue through the body. But it's easier to start with a topic that has something to do with the body–sport, sex, race, gender, illness, even gardening.
2. On your own, and without the necessary equipment or partners for your topic, perform an action (or actions) associated with or representative of your topic. Take note of how your body moves and feels, your reactions, your embarrassment, the relation of your body to others while doing this activity. Do this as often or as much as you need to, until you have a store of bodily knowledge.
3. Now, write. But don't forget about what you just did. Make your writing mimic the movement or rhythm or size or shape of your body. Use what you just learned about embarrassment, hitches in movement, sweat, effort. Make the body central in your work.

Read more of Rukmini's work on Floodmark.

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I don't know how many times, in the last several weeks, I've scrolled through my Facebook feed to see a post bemoaning our President Elect's language. I'm not talking about racial slurs and grabbing pussies. I'm simply talking about his command of basic English ("bigly" and "bad hombres," anyone?).



At this point, I usually have several thoughts:

1. Is this really the thing we need to be commenting on right now, when our future head of the EPA is vowing to fight three of our biggest climate change initiatives?
2. This feels a little elitist, though of course the representative of this country should be able to speak its language.
3. This "bad English" was probably a part of the connection that he made to so many people who'd never voted before.
4. Again, why do we need to spend this much time focusing on this part of his language, instead of other, more problematic, parts?

But I also wonder what effect our diminishing vocabularies (here's an example of how many words we no longer use to describe landscape) will have on our relationships with people in the future.


I teach a composition course to first-years in college, and I find myself needing to explain why my class is more than just a gen-ed for them to suffer through before they can move on to other, more important things. The point that I land on, and one I believe is true, is that we interact with more text in our day-to-day lives now than ever before. You're reading this on the interwebs where, earlier, you might have heard it as a radio segment or seen it on TV. If you find it particularly interesting, you might text someone about it, or post it on someone's wall. All of those are text-based communications.


The thing is, most of the text we consume nowadays is functional. It's written to convey meaning as quickly and efficiently as possible, without regard for "art" or "sounding good." Frankly, that's what I teach my students–how to structure their texts and sentences so that they make sense. I give extra points for style, but we only get to style when everything else is taken care of.


What will it mean when we only write to convey meaning, when our vocabularies don'e need to include both "jump" and "leap" because doesn't "leap" just mean "jump with more effort" (for the record, Google definies jump as "push oneself off a surface and into the air by using the muscles in one's legs and feet" and leap as "jump or spring a long way, to a great height, or with great force")?

Do we really lose anything when we aggressively categorize childrens' books according to "reading level," and so remove words that are "too difficult?" When I reread the books I read as a child of 6 and 7, I'm astounded that I was reading words like astounded without having to run to a dictionary of ask my parents what they meant. I guess I just learned, early on, how to read using context clues. No one taught me how to do that. It wasn't a skill I had to learn in school. I just did it.


And, while "Just do it" doesn't work for people who don't have access to a certain quality of education, or a home environment where reading is encouraged, or books, or a whole host of other things, it's only by challenging ourselves that we figure out what we need to learn. It's only by reading things we hate or disagree with that we truly realize what we believe in terms of style and subject. It's only by using "leap" when we mean "leap" and "jump" when we mean "jump" that we'll learn how to handle shades of meaning.


So, while our President Elect's vocabulary (or lack thereof) should be number 9357 on the list of Things That Worry You About Him, it should still be on there. When shades of meaning are crushed under accusations of political correctness, we do have to worry about the future of debate, disagreement and discourse.

Read more of Rukmini's work on Floodmark.

So, I was rereading our illustrious editor-in-chief's post on Amsterdam the other day, and this paragraph made me stop:

"I understand the desire to hold on to the physical manifestations of artists and writers: their pens, their grocery lists, their dog-eared books. Proof that they existed, that the history books didn't make them up. A reminder to us that the man existed before the museum. That he breathed on this artwork just like we're doing now even though we're not supposed to be so close."

Alexandria's post reminded me just how important it is to remember that writers are human beings, not mystical concentrations of essence that spew forth words on command. I, of all people, should understand this. I mean, I call myself a writer, and so, I'm aware that when I sit down at my computer, I've often just finished cleaning the toilet or vacuuming my rug or declogging the bathtub. There are many things I do that have nothing to do with writing, and yet influence it deeply.


However, throughout my college education, I learned relatively little about the writers I studied in literature classes across two departments (English and French). Only in one class–Women Writers and Feminist Theory–did my professor start each book with a discussion about the author's life story. In that class, I learned that Virginia Woolf had a supportive husband and female lovers, saw pictures of the Bronte sisters' house and the moors that show up so frequently in their work and learned other details about Toni Morrison, Jeanette Winterson and others that are preserved in some notebook in a drawer. Perhaps it's not surprising that I learned the importance of writers' lives in a Gender Studies class. After all, certain branches of feminism suggest that we reclaim the importance of the domestic (traditionally a feminized, and therefore inferior, realm).



As I continued to read more widely–writers of color, queer writers, female writers–learning about writers' lives became par for the course. And yet, I've noticed that we spend the most time on a writer's life when they are not straight, not white, not male or all three. Otherness makes a life interesting and relevant, apparently. Privilege does not. For the purposes of this discussion, let's define privilege as some quality (which you may or may not control) that gives you an advantage over people who do not have that quality. This can be your economic situation, your gender identity, your sexuality, your skin, your level of education and a lot of other things. A lot of us aren't even conscious of privilege (ours and others'), and that's part of the problem.


If it sounds like I'm arguing that we need to learn more about the lives of privileged writers, I am (and I've made a similar argument on this very site before). Before you throw your hands up and start shouting me down, let me add a very important caveat. This learning must not come at the expense of learning about the lives of writers who aren't. Let me explain.


If we learn, again and again, the stories of writers who were born into money, whose parents had fabulous connections and who are now editing major newspapers, magazines or journals, we will be able to see how their privilege functions. If we compare the volume of those stories with those of writers who aren't privileged, cannot spend all day writing and succeed or fail, we will be able to see how their experiences differ because of a lack of privilege. We will also be able to see, from a simple calculation, how many privileged writers there really are.


After the results of this US election, it is especially important to learn about the lives of writers (and people in general) who differ from us politically (it is equally important to read the things that they write, even if it's not autobiographical, as this excellent article suggests). For those people in positions of power, those to whom the new administration will cater, it is important to learn about the lives of the people who may not have the same privileges they do and how politics has and will impact those lives. For those of us who are outside certain positions of power, it is important to learn (if we do not know already) how the other half really lives. Only then can we take action, through writing and other methods, to make this country and this world a better place for all people.

Read more of Rukmini's work on Floodmark.

Do you think that you can't have the full experience of a poem unless you hear it out loud? You may be right.


Do you read your own poetry out loud? You should.

I'm sure you've heard this many times before, but, since a poem is (usually) relatively short, every little thing about it matters. What words you choose, the way they look on the page, the way they work together and the way they sound.


Different poems emphasize different things–some are about the meaning (or lack of meaning) in the words, some are all about the line breaks, some really draw their meaning from the way they look on the page (a great example of the last is Vivek Shraya's "even this page is white" from her poetry collection of the same name). But fewer poems place a really strong emphasis on the way a poem sounds. Sure, some formal poetry (by which I mean poetry in a metrical form, not poetry in a tuxedo) is written in a certain meter. Sure, there are repetition and hard sounds and soft sounds. But have you ever heard anything like this?

As you might have guessed, it's in French. But it probably didn't take a great deal of French knowledge for you to hear how often the words "père" (father) and "mère" (mother) repeat throughout this poem. Of course, the poet, Grand Corps Malade, spends a great deal of time talking about mothers and fathers in general, but this poem is filled with puns and layers of meaning expressed purely through sound. Here's an example:

At one point, Grand Corps Malade mentions "les ex-pères du divorce" (the former fathers of divorce). That's an excellent and really unique way of discussing the effects of divorce on all members of a family. BUT, there's a whole extra layer of meaning, because that same phrase could also be "les experts du divorce" (which is pronounced exactly the same and means "experts on divorce" ie people who've been divorced multiple times). Which one is it "really?" Here's the thing... we'll never know. If you Google the lyrics, you'll be able to find many different versions of this poem online. None of them are officially sanctioned. Because Grand Corps Malade believes that his poetry should be heard, which allows all those layers of meaning to exist at once.

This kind of thing is much easier to do in French than English, simply because of the way the language works. There are a lot more words which end with the same sounds than there are in English, in which there are more exceptions than rules. Admittedly, I don't have the widest knowledge of poetry, but I've been unable to find anything that plays with sound as explicitly as "Pères et Mères" does. Not Dadaist sound poetry, which focuses on sound, but lacks the meaning and wordplay of Grand Corps Malade. Not anything else. The closest thing I saw was "Lost Voices", which relies on the voices saying the words as much as the words themselves to make meaning.

But if it hasn't been done, that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it (if it has been done and I just don't know about it, please let me know)!

So, here's your assignment: write out a list (or several) of words which rhyme. See if any patterns emerge. Then write a poem (or a few lines) in which you try to make puns and layer meaning through sound. This is a pretty difficult one, so please share if you succeed!

Read more of Rukmini's work on Floodmark.

Write here. 

I wrote my first ever post for Floodmark on a Metra train from the northwest suburbs to Chicago. I took that train back and forth six days a week for much of my first semester of graduate school. And, consequently, I did a lot of reading and writing in transit. My laptop was too heavy to be lugging around six days a week. I had no choice but to start writing by hand.


I started writing on a computer, in Microsoft Word. And now, after years and years of papers, there's something comforting about Times New Roman, 12-point, double-spaced. But, once I started carrying a notebook with me on the train, never-before-seen writing vistas opened up for me. Suddenly, I could write on park benches. At bus stops. By the lake. Everywhere! And I could finally use the notebooks and journals and diaries that people started giving me once I became known as one of the family writers.


Exploring new places allowed my writing to change. Recently, I was working on a piece about gardens and inspiration. I rode my bicycle along the Lakefront Trail, found a suitable spot, opened up a black diary and began to write. And, my goodness, that piece just streamed out of my pen in a way it hadn't the last several times I'd tried to write it. There was something about being able to see the horizon, the vastness of the lake and space itself that fit the expansiveness of the piece.


If you're struggling with a piece, or even if you aren't, write in new places. Write on buses and trains. Write by a water body if you have one close to you. Write in your bathroom and kitchen. Write at the grocery store. You'll see your writing change. And when you see that, hey, why not share it with us?

Read more from Rukmini on Floodmark!

This, this is what your field of inspiration looks like.

I didn't write much this summer. I felt uninspired.


Once the semester was done (remember this post? Well, the spring semester was even worse...), I kept writing for a few weeks.  It was like coasting to a stop on my bike. Muscle memory, almost. And then, I stopped. I was tired. I'd been reading and writing nonstop for about two months at that point, and I basically just ran out of steam. Over the rest of the summer, I wrote zero essays. I started a couple, but couldn't find a way to continue them. I wrote a few posts for Floodmark. I wrote emails and Facebook posts and the occasional Tweet. I wrote a couple of articles to pitch to online magazines. But I wrote zero essays.


And that was okay.


Let me say it again; listen carefully. That. Was. Okay.


I started out feeling guilty. All my professors had warned us not to spend an entire summer not writing. Two of my friends from my MFA program set themselves a goal to write an essay a week this summer. But everybody's writing needs are different. And sometimes, the lack of inspiration is just our mind's way of telling us to take a break.


Do you know what I did this summer? I watched Orange is the New Black. I spent a couple of weeks at home helping to take care of my grandmother. I started watching House of Cards. I watched a lot of soccer. I house- and cat-sat for a friend. I translated a play. I searched for (and found) a studio apartment and moved in. I watched the Olympics. And I spent a fair amount of time indulging my second love–theatre. I took a class with the Neofuturists, which was a dream come true. I did a staged reading at a small theatre and met some great people. So, although I wasn't reading or writing much throughout the summer, I didn't spend it in bed with no mental stimulation. I became very interested in how storytelling in TV shows is similar to and different from storytelling in other media. I returned to telling stories through theatre. I created in different forms.


The next time you hit a dry spell, don't worry. Submerge yourself in other forms of art that you enjoy. Visit museums. Talk to friends who write or make art in some other form. Indulge in your hobbies. They'll simply provide food for your writing when you go back to it. If you feel your dry spell has gone on too long, however, Alyssa has some excellent advice on how to get you of it!

I'd forgotten that there is a certain shape to a summer vacation.

This summer was the first I've had in a while. My last three summers were spent traveling, working or in a weird limbo between two institutions of higher learning. This one was what summers used to be: a strongly bounded piece of time between two relatively similar academic years. Though I was working part-time and, as a result, wasn't completely on vacation, this might be the very last full summer vacation that I ever have.


And so I got to thinking about how I could refresh that tired old prompt of What-I-Did-On-My-Summer-Vacation, and I came up with this–what I imagine a textbook would have to say about the progression of a summer vacation:


The following are the four general phases in the progression of a summer vacation. Depending on the individual's emotional and physical constitution, their length and intensity may vary but they are all, to some degree present.

1. The Academic Ebb: This is the period of time, more pronounced the further you progress in your education, when you know it's summer but can't quite rid yourself of the practices of the school year. Resentment colors a lot of what you do during this time (as in, "It's summer, why do I still have to grade mountains of papers?"). But there is a lighter side to the Academic Ebb. You're often as busy as you were during the academic year, but with activities such as end-of-semester parties.
2. Hibernation: The length of this period of time correlates directly to the level of stress in the preceding semester and inversely to your level of extroversion. As its name suggests, this period marks time when you enjoy simply doing nothing. "Nothing" could mean sleeping for most of the day, long walks or bike rides, or even hanging out with friends with no agenda. Perhaps it is a combination of all three. But during Hibernation, you journey as far away from your schedule during the academic year as possible.
3. Coasting: This period is usually the most enjoyable of the summer. Whereas Hibernation is characterized by an often frenetic desire to counteract the effects and schedules of an academic year, Coasting involves a return to some semblance of a schedule and, usually, a greater degree of activity. This could mean picking up extra shifts at work, planning more activities with friends or, simply, getting out more. This is the period of summer when you enjoy setting your own pace and choosing what activities to engage in, where you immerse yourself most fully in the moment, without thought of the preceding or upcoming academic years.
4. Climax: Like autumn in the year, this phase leads into the end of the summer. The academic year is visible and, if preparation is necessary, it takes place now. More importantly, this period is marked by a frenetic desire to take full advantage of the waning days of summer. The inverse of Hibernation, it is often marked by intense bouts of activity that never leave you completely satisfied. You may be so busy cramming activities into your day that you are unable to fully enjoy any of them, or you may feel exhausted by the sheer amount of time spent having all the fun that you think you will not have during the academic year. Even if you have the best possible end to the summer, it will only make you regret returning to your institution of learning even more.

So... what did you think of my textbook definition of a summer vacation? Does it describe yours? How could you write about What-You-Did-During-Your-Summer-Vacation without describing exactly what you did during your summer vacation? 

Read more of Rukmini's work on Floodmark.

Go to Wangechi Mutu's website and you'll see a picture of the back of a woman's head. The woman has braids, gathered in two coils and woven with blue fabric on the sides of her head. There's something visceral and unexpected about seeing someone's scalp and the back of their neck. They're not parts of the anatomy that we're trained to pay attention to. Stay long enough, and you'll see three clouds blossom, filled with swathes of color and texture.


And that's it. No menus, no pointer that changes into a hand when you hover over a clickable link. Your cursor has already changed into a brown hand with long, painted nails, wearing a kind of woven or knitted fingerless glove.


I won't give away the secret of the navigation menu. That would be going against the spirit of Mutu's website and her work–unexpected, colorful, thoughtful–both of which encourage you to take your time.


Vivid, visceral compositions using elements of sculpture and collage, Mutu's work makes me think about what it means to exist with everything that inhabits this world. Mutu spends a lot of time doing that as well. Born in Kenya, educated in Wales and the US, and currently working in New York, Mutu started Africa's Out! last year, "a bold loudspeaker and a groundbreaking proponent for gender and sexuality equality that calls for radical change through 'Imaginative Activism', creative brilliance, and new effective methods of articulation."

Take a look at some of these works by Mutu, and think about her methods of articulation:

Automatic Hip
(source)

(source)

Forbidden Fruit Picker
(source)

Ghost Children
(source)

Look Before You Swallow
(source)

Our Eyes Were Watching
(source)

Primal Glare
(source)

Sleeping Sickness Saved Me
(source)

You Are My Sunshine
(source)

The Prompt

Now pick a work that inspired you most (or, if you're feeling especially inspired, pick all of them!), and incorporate elements from it into a poem. Is a certain color particularly prevalent? Movement? A gesture? A mood? Collage? Honestly, in most of Mutu's works, it's all of the above. If that seems overwhelming, pick one aspect to focus on. But, the more you can work with, the better. The subject is up to you, though you can draw inspiration about that from Mutu's works as well.


And, if you write something you're proud of, why not share it with us?

Read more of Rukmini's work on Floodmark.

One of my friends posted on Facebook that Shakespeare wasn't a feminist. He wasn't. There was no such word in the 16th century, when Shakespeare was writing, and he certainly doesn't fit our definition of feminist today. And yet, this friend was making the point that Shakespeare's views on women were so misogynistic that it's almost offensive to even associate the word feminist with him. I think I draw the line there. In the 16th century–when women couldn't own anything, even the clothes they wore, and were, quite literally, the property of their husbands–writing about women as real people with real feelings and some degree of agency was pretty remarkable (you can read a more detailed opinion on this here).


It seems to be in vogue nowadays to dismiss canonized writers simply because they've been canonized. Now, I understand that there are a lot of problems with our idea of "canon" in the first place–the disproportionate number of white, male writers, the predominance of writers from Europe and North America, the disproportionate number of writers who've been dead for decades. And yet (I say this as a woman of color, as a person who didn't read a single book about people who look and speak like me until my junior year of college), this is getting a little ridiculous.


It's great to push for the creation of a more inclusive canon. It's great to tell people about lesser-known writers who still write beautifully and should be in the canon. It's great to point out the place of privilege from which a lot of canonized writers were writing. It's great to questions whether we should even have a canon in the first place.


But jumping down people's throats for praising canonized writers, because we shouldn't be praising work that is racist, or sexist, or imperialist, or some other -ist by our standards today? That's where there has to be a line.


When I'm reading a work by a canonized writer that offends my modern sensibilities, I ask myself two questions:

1. Is promoting our modern definitions of racism/sexism/imperialism the main point of this work?
2. Is this work teaching me something I didn't know about the levels of racism/sexism/imperialism in the past?

If the answer to question 1 is no, or the answers to both questions is yes, then I tamp down whatever disgust I may feel and keep reading. Take Jane Eyre. When discussing Bertha, there's a long disquisition about the difference and inferiority of Caribbean people, how their environment makes them prone to madness and savagery and all kinds of evil. And people from the Caribbean aren't the only ones. For a while, Jane thinks of traveling to India to help civilize and minister to the savages there. I was disgusted. But, I didn't stop reading, and I don't think Charlotte Bronte was any more racist or imperialist than any other British person in the 19th century. Jane Eyre is not a novel about the terrible awfulness of people of color. And, for my American classmates, it was probably something of an education in the racism that played a part in founding the British Empire. So, although I was disgusted by parts of it, I actually enjoyed and liked the novel as a whole.

By the same token, I am sickened by Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" and refuse to read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Though they are part of the canon, often taught in classes on postcolonial literature to demonstrate 19th and 20th century British views on the people they colonized, the point of both works is to promote what we would call racism and imperialism. And, growing up in India, I learned enough about colonial British views on the colonized that I don't need to read more works demonstrating that.


Some day, we may end up blowing up the canon and, if we do, I may agree with that decision. But, until then, I will continue to read some writers who, if they were writing today, would be considered deeply offensive. But that's the point. They aren't writing today. They are artefacts of their time. And if their work isn't an endless stream of hate (as some canonized works are), I will even enjoy it.

Read more of Rukmini's work on Floodmark.

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Sometimes, you just don't want to read. One of my friends is reading a copy of Aristotle's Poetics, which isn't easy reading for anyone. But, Poetics is one of the best resources for anyone who's interested in storytelling and my friend is a screenwriter. He's just plowing through the book, but his case of "reader's block" got me thinking about another way to combat writer's block (although these are a great starting place).


It's a good idea, in general, to have more interests than writing poetry. Branch out across genres. Even better, explore another form of storytelling entirely. TV writing is very different from film writing, which is very different from play writing. Draw. Paint. Act. Play an instrument. Follow a sport. There are a million things out there. Having other interests will help you find things to write about. It will also help you when you get stuck.




So, if you're having trouble continuing a piece you've already begun, here's what you do:

1. Pick one of your other interests (preferably something that's relatively far away from the genre of the piece).
2. Conceptualize your piece in terms of that interest. Maybe it's a basketball play with the last action missing, maybe it's a painting that needs a few more strokes of color, maybe it's a choral arrangement missing one part.
3. Fill in what's missing. Design the last action, add the last few strokes of paint, write that last part of music.
4. Now translate it back to your piece. Maybe you decided your painting needed more red. What does that mean for your piece? Anger? Brightness? Sunsets?
5. Start writing.

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Take a second, close your eyes and think of the most recent poem that you wrote. Now think of it as a clothesline with laundry hanging on it. The laundry is the decorative elements of your poetry–the imagery, the metaphors, the very words, everything else you use to convey your point. The clothesline? That's the narrative arc.


In the context of poetry, I think of narrative arc as the balance of your guiding idea. Whatever you want to say with your poem. You could be telling a story, sure, but you could also be writing about an idea, or an emotion, or something you're not quite sure about until you actually write the poem. But whatever it is, it has to remain balanced.


Think of that clothesline again. It can't be strung too loosely, or it'll sag and dirty your clothes. It can't be strung too tightly, or it might snap if you hang something too heavy. It has to be thick enough all the way through, or it could break. You have to spread the clothes out evenly, or you risk breaking or deforming the line. And you need a clothesline in the first place, or you end up with nothing more than a pile of clothes.


Translate that to poetry, and here's what you need to have:

• An intention for how your guiding idea moves throughout the poem. If you're not entirely sure how your guiding idea functions in every bit of your poem, it's going to sag at some point under the weight of whatever language tricks you hang on it. But, it also needs some flexibility, some room to move. If nothing about your guiding idea changes throughout the poem, it'll start to constrain your writing. If you experiment, try and push a slightly fanciful metaphor on it, it'll snap and send everything cascading into the dust.
• Enough of your guiding idea in the poem all the way through, so that your reader can understand what's going on. If your idea breaks under the weight of language that's too flowery, or a metaphor that's too deep, your reader is going to come to that break in the clothesline and get completely lost.
• A relatively even balance of metaphor and other linguistic tricks all the way through your poem. Imagine that clothesline with a bunch of clothes all at one end and naked rope on the other side. It'd look pretty strange, wouldn't it? If you overload one part of your poem with language tricks, so will your poem. Also, you will force your narrative arc into a shape you didn't want, possibly changing the entire meaning of the poem.
• A guiding idea. This should go without saying, which is why I put it at the end, but you really do need a guiding idea to use throughout your poem. A pile of language tricks, while it might be pretty to look at, ultimately makes no sense without an idea to hold it up.

If all this sounds vague, that's because it is. The balance of your guiding idea is going to look different in each poem you write. In one, your clothesline might be thick and visible. In another, it might be relatively thin. Sometimes, all you need is a smattering of hints at your main idea throughout the poem.


For example, let's look at how the writers of Netflix's Orange is the New Black handle the Piper-Alex story arc in the very first episode of Season 1. For those of you who don't know a thing about Orange is the New Black, it centers (at least for the first few seasons) on an upper middle-class white woman, Piper Chapman, who goes to prison for being marginally involved, thanks to her ex-girlfriend Alex Vause, in an international drug ring. Years later, they find themselves in the same prison.


Since Orange is a TV show, it has many other story arcs which all play out over a very long period of time, so it's a little artificial to look at just one episode. But the first episode is a great example of how subtly you can hint at an idea without really expressing it. Alex isn't named in the first episode. We don't even learn that she's in the same prison as Piper until the last seconds. However, the writers keep showing her, or things to do with her, so much so that they're basically screaming, "Hey, pay attention to this person! She's going to be important!"


The third shot we see is of Piper and Alex in the shower. And, through flashbacks, we keep seeing the depth of their relationship. For example, when Piper is served her arrest papers, she tries to explain it away to her fiance by saying, "I was 22. I thought I was in love." Then she pauses, and says, "I was in love." We see Alex convincing Piper to carry a suitcase of money to Brussels. She only did it once, but that was enough to send her to prison. So, when we and Piper learn, at the very end of the episode, that Alex is in the same prison–she comes to say hello after Piper has had a very bad morning–and Piper lets out a scream, it feels like the logical end of the clothesline. If the writers had shown us Alex so much with no payoff at the end, it would have been like following an arc only to have it suddenly vanish into thin air.


Like the writers of Orange is the New Black, you can be subtle (and honestly, if you want a lesson in developing a story over a period of time, watch a season or two and track one plotline). You can have a narrative arc that's almost invisible under your choices with language and form. Or, you can have a thick, well-defined narrative arc running visibly through a poem. It all depends on your style and your subject. But, if you take anything away from this very long post, remember this: you must have a narrative arc, it must run all the way through your poem, and it must balance with the language and form of the poem. So go forth, write a poem, or dig up one of your old ones, and see if you can track the narrative arc through it!

Read more of Rukmini's fantastic writing advice on Floodmark.

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Poetry 101 is a series of posts written by the Floodmark editors following our White Elephant Poetry Contest during National Poetry Month. We promised to give every writer who submitted to our contest feedback on their work -- and we did! In the process, we found tons of inspiration for helpful posts on Floodmark. Are you just starting out in the poetry game? Are you dabbling? Are you stuck, frustrated, and looking for some idea as to why? Poetry 101 might just be for you. The editors have chosen something they noticed time and time again was holding great poems back from being great. Check back every Wednesday for a new post on a different aspect of the poem!  Let us know if there's something you'd like to see us tackle and we'll gladly have a go at it for you. If you're wondering it, chances are someone is asking the same question out there. 

I love the Harry Potter series. If you tell me to pick a favorite book, I will first curl up in a ball, then attempt to escape, then refuse to answer but, if you keep pushing, I will probably default to something from the Harry Potter series.

(source)

Harry Potter is for kids. Harry Potter is popular. Harry Potter is not supposed to be an MFA candidate's favorite book. Each time I tell people I love Harry Potter, those words bounce around my head. But you know what? Forget that.


The word popular comes from a Latin word meaning people. Popular means "liked or enjoyed by many people." When did that become a bad thing?


There's a reason a book, or a series of books, becomes popular. There's a reason that you, I and we all like a certain thing, and while my cynical side is telling me that advertising and the socioeconomic status of the protagonist and so many other things play a role in popularity, there's a part of me that believes that there's a certain quality to good writing that shines through a book, popular or not.


If you take away one thing from this post, I hope it is this: if you love a book, or a story, or a poem, or an essay, don't listen to what anyone else says. You love it for a reason and, if you can figure out that reason, there's something it can teach you.


Harry Potter constructs an full, believable world and a series of complex characters who act in believable ways (mostly). Nicholas Sparks (against whom my high-school English teacher had a particular vendetta, and who I've never read because of that) pulls on your heartstrings better than a lot of other writers do. Even Fifty Shades of Grey (of which I read a page before deciding that the quality of the writing was too terrible to continue) showed that there is a market, and a certain degree of acceptance, for long-form erotica.


So, here's your prompt for today, and it's both simple and extremely complicated:
Think of your favorite book, poem, story or essay. Think of something that you love, that made you sink lower in your chair, smile and close your eyes for a moment when you read it, before you heard or read anyone else's reaction. Now think about why you love it so much (it might help to write this part down). Try and emulate that in your writing.

Read more of Rukmini's excellent work on Floodmark.

The bike selfie–a specialist's art.

My mum was right. Every time she gave me a notebook before we went on a trip, every time she sighed when I wrote in that notebook for two days and shoved it into a suitcase, she was right. Because she wanted me to save the memories I was making.


If you've been reading my other posts on Floodmark, you'll know that I'm not a fan of the belief that you absolutely have to write every day. It's especially difficult to do when traveling because you're often too busy seeing and doing stuff to worry about your travel journal. But, like my mother did for me, I encourage you to make an effort. Make more of an effort than you do in your day-to-day life. Because you're seeing so much that you will thank yourself for preserving.


For me, that's really what travel writing is about–preserving memories for yourself and, if you choose, a wider audience.


So, here are my top tips for writing about your journeys:

1. Keep a travel diary. And/or take lots of pictures. Don't be that annoying person at the Louvre threatening to poke someone's eye out with a selfie stick in front of the Mona Lisa. But preserve the little details of your trip in some way. You're going to remember seeing the Mona Lisa. You might not remember Giuseppe Arcimboldo's paintings personifying the seasons. Whether you choose to preserve the details in writing, in pictures or in a combination of the two, preserve them. Don't worry about beautiful descriptions and similes and metaphors. Don't even worry about complete sentences. When I go through my journals from my study abroad trips to Amsterdam and Paris, I see that there are times when I wrote in bullet points because that's all the time I had.
2. If you only write for yourself, your travel diary and photo album might be all you need. But, if you're interested in sharing your travel experiences with a wider range of people (for instance, here on Floodmark), your travel diary and pictures will be invaluable. You'll have to craft a poem or narrative out of that raw material, but remember, it's all in the details. Since you're helping your reader experience a place they've (probably) never been to before, you need to tell them as much as you can about what that place is like. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures, colors–as much imagery as you can. I spent an entire paragraph in my diary describing the process of eating pickled herring in The Hague. I haven't written any essays about pickled herring, but if I do, I'll have far more to rely on than a memory from a few years ago.

   
   

   I didn't remember how big a bite the herring actually was...

3. But maybe I won't write about pickled herring after all, because the most compelling travel writing deals with what you won't find in tourist guides. And pickled herring? It's all over every tourist guide and blog about the Netherlands that you'll find. Don't get me wrong. It's still possible for you to write a great piece about, say, the canals of Amsterdam, which have been written about for centuries. But I'd be much more interested in hearing the story of the cat you saw fall into a canal in the Red Light District instead of hearing about the sex shops (yes, I did see a cat fall into a canal, and I also saw half the street rush to rescue it) or the man you shared a car with on the way to Darjeeling.
4. In writing about the smaller details, you'll manage to convey why you are writing about what you're writing about. It's easy to get carried away by natural beauty, internationally famous landmarks and everything that's cool about the place you're seeing. But part of why we read about other people's travels is because we want to learn what they learned from their experiences. Don't forget that you are your readers' guide to the place that you're showing us. Show us what matters to you and tell us why.
5. And what matters to you doesn't have to be in Amsterdam, Paris, Darjeeling or New Orleans. If you've never traveled out of of your state, you can still apply the principles of travel writing to something about your own backyard. After all, in the age of Google, most people can live vicariously in whatever part of the world they choose. So, it's all the more important that you write about places that matter to you. If that place is your back porch, so be it.

Read more of Rukmini's lovely writing on Floodmark.

Shelley knew what he was on about when he said "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." He's been saying the same thing writers have known since the first cave man started dreaming in symbols on the cave walls: writing changes the world. If not the whole world, then one world at a time. Suddenly, you have the words to describe every detail: who you are, what you look like, how you feel, and everything you're experiencing, right down to the pebble stuck in your sneaker that's been stabbing you in the heel all afternoon. Writing is an act of liberation. Set the words free, crack the world open wide, and see how everything changes.

This is what we believe in at Floodmark, what we're passionate about: helping the full power of the written word find its way into the hands of a creative community who cares. And you know what? Good things come when you follow your passion. It's not always easy, and passion demands you put in the hours, but somewhere along that road serendipity is waiting for you to unknowingly walk into its embrace. Hence, the beauty in this wild universe. 

So, when I was offered the opportunity to lead a creative writing workshop on identity at Q-Cafe for the LGBTQIAP+ community at Loyola University, I realized it was time to start practicing what I preach. From there, the SDMA department at Loyola was kind enough to invite me to present at their Q-Summit in April following my first presentation. Just like that Floodmark had a whole other avenue of getting our message out into the world -- to hopefully change it. Serendipity. 

We're presenting at Loyola's Q Summit today to discuss creative discovery and identity through poetry! They're giving out awesome buttons -- "Ask Me About My Pronouns". Just goes to show how much the way we name things impacts our perception -- language can change the world, folks. #bethechange #askmeaboutmypronouns #lgbtqia #writerslife #writingcommunity #writingblog #beinspired #npm2016 #npm16 #poetrymonth #nationalpoetrymonth #nationalpoetrymonth2016 #poetrycommunity #poetrygram #poetryofig #writersofig #loyolachicago #qsummit #writeitdown #creativewriting #lecturer #lucqsummit

A photo posted by Floodmark (@floodmark.poetry) on Apr 9, 2016 at 7:44am PDT

And it doesn't stop there, folks. At  Q-Summit, it was my pleasure to make the acquaintance of Vanessa Sheridan, the director of Trans Relations and Community Engagement at the Center on Halsted in Chicago, an authoress of three books on gender identity and transgender issues in the workplace and beyond, and one of the most inspirational, warm, passionate people I have ever had the fortune to meet. The Center on Halsted is the third largest LGBTQ+ community center in the country, behind NYC and LA. Vanessa and I had kept up our correspondence since Q-Summit, and recently she offered to give Floodmark a tour of the Center. To say it was a lovely afternoon would be an understatement. We learned a ton about the incredible work the Center is doing in Chicago, a lot about the remarkable work Vanessa is doing, took a stroll in the sunshine, and shared some great conversation.

(source)

I'll let Rukmini take it from here. She sums up our experience and  our takeaway as Editors at Floodmark perfectly:


I was especially excited to visit after seeing Phillip Dawkins' play, Charm, last year. Charm tells the story of an etiquette class run by Mama Darleena Andrews at a community center known as The Center. It's based on "Mama" Gloria Allen's real-life charm school at the Center on Halsted. I don't cry easily while reading books or watching theatre (movies are another story, I will often bawl while watching them), but I cried a lot while watching Charm. The reason I cried so much was because Charm told the story of a community--a fragile, often dysfunctional community, but a community nonetheless. And that's what stayed with me most about our visit to the Center. No longer fragile, certainly not dysfunctional, it provides a community for so many people--from the 70+ LGBTQ+ seniors who live in the apartment block we visited to everyone who uses the space and participates in the seemingly unlimited variety of programs it offers. Vanessa explained the architecture to us, saying that all the glass walls and windows serve not just to let in natural light, but as a symbol for a community that no longer has to hide in attics and behind closed doors. Just like the Center, we at Floodmark, and as citizens of the world, need to provide more spaces filled with light, openness and acceptance.


And that's precisely what we aim to do here at Floodmark: open the shades and let the light of inspiration stream through the windows. I hope our little creative community, growing larger with every post, can bask in the warmth with us.

And who knows what's next? Surely, you'll see more of us giving back to our community and finding ways our message can help make our corner of the world a little brighter, a little better.

As always, much, much more to come.

For more information about the Center on Halsted and the services it provides the community, you can visit their website. Our sincerest and most profound thanks to Dominique Petrassi and the Loyola SDMA Department, who gave us the inspiration and opportunity to find our way to make a difference in the LGBTQIP+ community, and to Vanessa Sheridan for her beautiful friendship, passionate soul, and commitment to making a difference for all in the LGBTQIAP+ community. 

&

Sometimes, writing feels like driving on an empty highway stretching out to the horizon. Sometimes, writing feels like trying to squeeze half-dried concrete through a pinhole. And sometimes, writing feels like digging your nails into the most sensitive part of your body and slowly peeling the skin away.

I've been working on an essay about a romantic-relationship-that-wasn't. I had feelings for a good friend. The friend didn't have feelings for me. And things got rather complicated from there. I thought that two years had given me enough time to be able to write calmly about this relationship-that-wasn't. It had not.


There are times when writing this piece has literally brought me to my knees, when I shut down my computer and kneeled on the floor of my bedroom, doubled over. Just now, on my fifth draft of this essay (I don't think I've ever written five drafts of anything before now), I spent an hour and a half writing less than 200 words, before closing out of Word in frustration and deciding that writing about writing this piece would be easier than actually writing it.


Why do I put myself through this, you ask? I've asked myself that more than once as I've worked through these five drafts (fifth one still in progress, weeks after I wrote the initial part of this post). Maybe it's too early. Maybe I need to wait longer before writing about this particular relationship.

But, for some slightly perverse reason, I have persevered. There are times when I've had to spend a week or two working on something else, but I have persevered.


Maybe it's because of something akin to what Gary said in "Depression and Writing": "Writing has been like unspooling a tightly wrapped ball of yarn into an itchy sweater. I'm always uncomfortable with what I've done but it feels like an accomplisment." Sometimes, my sweater has felt like it was made of needles instead of yarn, but making it has felt like an accomplishment. Like I have distanced myself enough, finally, to be able to do what a writer does and make choices about how to present a story powerfully. Like a mile marker on one of life's roads.


But it's more than that. It's like alchemy. There's something about taking a stressful, often unhappy time and transforming it into words. Words have always been my happy place, whether I've been reading them or producing them. And there's something transformative about watching what has been, so far, undefined, morph into prose. And when there is prose, there are imaginary readers. So I haven't just been transforming the story of this relationship-that-wasn't. I've been sharing it.

Sometimes, there are emotions–anger, sadness, resentment, love–that you don't get through unless you write about something for the first time. It may not be the right time to start writing about an experience. But you will never know until you try. I will keep writing until I feel finished with this piece (and who knows how long that will take?). In the meantime, I hope you will start. What is the most difficult thing for you to write about?

Read more of Rukmini's work on Floodmark.