Weekend Poetry Dates are a weekly series of posts reporting on this newbie's exploration of poetry during National Poetry Month (April 2012). See all the posts here.

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"Poetry... is ear candy. It's a blind date with enchantment. It's the first refuge against indifference."

~ J. Patrick Lewis

It's the last week! Where oh where did the month go?

I didn't quite write as much poetry as I would have liked to nor did I read as much, but I did read some and I even tried my hand at a few superficial haikus (read: I only followed the 5-7-5 rule, none of the others and I'm now just learning that I counted syllables and not necessarily ons, soooo looks like I just wrote a few really short poems, but I digress...). All of this is more than I'd done in the past several years - plus I posted about it all here.

I'm happy.

I thought I'd leave you with one of the haiku-like poems I wrote following the haiku-based 5-7-5 syllable guideline and a beautiful true haiku by Issa.*

Mine was inspired by a child's reaction to, from an adult's perspective, rather unfortunate circumstances:

Toddler stomps with glee

Father sighs and brushes car

April snow falls white

~ SG

And I leave you with this one by Issa:

Live in simple faith

Just as the trusting cherry

Flowers, fades, and falls

~ Issa

I hope you enjoyed our weekend poetry dates. I know I did.

* I discovered the poem by Issa thanks to a lovely application I purchased for the iPad called Chasing Fireflies. Combining haiku with soothing sounds and visuals, it's a delight to the senses.

setting up for the interview, view from the interviewee's chair

"My name is Stephanie Guimond. I'm a painter, I'm an ar... I'm an artist, I'm an all-around creative person."

The first words I spoke for our interview.

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During the past week I've been the subject of an artist profile, working with a local film student on his mini-documentary assignment. Last Friday was the interview portion.

Going in I was more nervous about my physical appearance during the interview than my answers. The last time I saw myself on film was at a community event and I cringed at the spastic-looking facial expressions that happened when I spoke (y'all are so polite, nobody's ever told me!).

To make a long story short, the interview went well and I responded to the filmmaker's questions calmly and with ease.

I saw some rough footage this morning and even the facial expressions aren't too bad, though mental note: looking straight into the camera is a more flattering angle for me than looking up - which I tend to do often when I'm thinking and answering questions on the fly.

What dawned on me after the interview was how irrevocable my words and thoughts were now that they were captured on film and witnessed by another in such an intimate one-on-one fashion, how I could no longer disown them.

Scary and power-full.

I decided then & there to start owning my words whether captured on film or not. It's time to live them, believe them and acknowledge their validity.

I guess I better choose and use them wisely.

"The more she spoke her words, the more she grew into them."

post-interview piece, prints available in the shop

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What kind of words do you use daily? Are they mostly positive? Negative?

What if the more you spoke them the more you grew into them, would you choose them differently?

Weekend Poetry Date - Week 4

On Owning Our Words...