Hello,
Last Sunday our poetry prompt was set by
and I’ll be honest I did this one more than once. I even shared it with my journaling community on our Sunday morning journal session because it linked in really nicely with a nature journaling workshop I’m running next week. So yes, this is a recommend to go and check it out if you missed it. And a thank you to LeeAnn.And yet, I have no poem to show at the end of it. No sculpted words On Beauty. Partly because I didn’t get round to going back over my scribbles and turning them into something. And partly because I particularly enjoyed having a play this week. I enjoyed the pre-writing bit a lot. I think I’ll go back to this prompt and I’m sure I’ll go back to some of the notes I made at a later stage. I grasped a few snippets. I uncovered the threads of some new thinking. The odd one line. I sank back into my chair and I enjoyed myself. And that really can be enough.
Here are a few poems which play around with beauty in some form, well, beautifully…

The first is Instinct by
from her new collection, Instructions for Travelling West.
These I have loved, by Sarah Crossan, from, Tomorrow is Beautiful.
Extract from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman - listen/read the full thing here.
For Keeps by Joy Harjo from the collection, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.
Did you manage to pull together a poem this week? How did you find the writing prompt? Was it a week where writing came easy?
Or if you’re purely here for the reading, which one of the poems above is your favourite?
Let’s chat in the comments,
Nelly x
I love these poems. I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with in the morning. It’s almost 11 pm here so I’m off to bed.
good day all, so I had a good play, following the prompt exactly, including timings etc and, as is my wont, wrote abut it extensively here https://tamchennell.substack.com/p/poetry-pals-week-17-timed-poetry?r=2mh4vu if you like the idea of reading that. I struggled with the refining of the poem and ended up with fistfuls of versions, but settled on this one, I'm still not convinced I chose the right format. (odd dots to maintain formatting only)
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Thalassophile
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surf-dragged grains sweep the shore,
roll on crumpled waters edge.
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sparkle-topped waves ridge sand
gridded impressions litter the beach
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wind-whipped surf crazes tasty lips
dank salt-breeze hair crunches, crackles
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gritty sand finds flesh creases into lined skin,
rough grains rubbed between briny digits
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tickling marram grass fortifies trickling dunes,
unstable terrain erasing sunken footprints
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bladderwrack pops slimily underfoot,
sending spicy sea-scent soaring
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toe curling cold shallow pools suck breath
harbour tide-waiting stranded creatures
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share this wonder sit, listen, see, feel
gentle harmony, peace, beauty