Fyrewrit

So like I said, there’s a plethora of creative writing-related opportunities around Seattle, but the principal ones so far for me have been right on campus. For one, there’s the quarterly sci-fi/fantasy journal AU (to which I will be submitting a brand-new, thematically-relevant story within a week), as well as the more general Bricolage, but there’s also two groups: The unfortunately-abbreviated English honor society Sigma Tau Delta–a formal, albeit currently quite small closed club–and the casual gang of literary geeks that is “Write Away!” So far, the latter has been great; I’ve only been to one complete meeting so far (and due to a scheduling conflict, I’ll be missing yet another next week), but the camaraderie is splendid and the trio of prompts we’re set to work off of each time produce some remarkable stuff. There’s no criticism involved, but that’s okay–there’ll be no shortage of that in my actual English classes!

Anyway, the point: At yesternight’s meeting, the middle prompt was intended to be based on whatever “inspiration” we happened to have, though the time was prefaced with a pair of videos of performance poet Sarah Kay (if you like yourself some deep free-verse in front of a mike, check her out on YouTube by all means). Afterwards, I learned that some people continued their prompt from the first exercise, and some people either zeroed in on a very specific part I didn’t catch right away or just did their own thing, but I tried to work based on a synthesis of the two poems she performed. One was about the California wildfires, another was about desperately-written postcards. I thought about it, and… I came up with the attached poem.

Note: I did give it some editing afterwards, and since I also felt a little uncomfortable about it being composed in my pet rhyming structure, about my pet subject matter (even though it was largely stream-of-consciousness at first, and we had 20 minutes), I… embellished it a bit.

Fyrewrit

4 Comments

  1. That was… actually, I rather liked it. Even if I’m not sure I understand it. Well done!

  2. Thanks! And yeah, I don’t want to ruin it by overexplaining what’s going on, but it’s basically about fire as a metaphor for… angry writing.

  3. This poem was incredible Trevor, your writing is simply superb. In fact, Aunt Wendy and I were debating the source for your inspiration of this poem. She said it was most definitely a lost love and I said it was more likely an awesome attempt for your next (writing) scholarship.
    Either way, we loved it!
    Keep up the great work,
    Uncle Phillip

  4. Thanks! And I suppose it’s a little of both, actually–like I said, it’s not about anybody real, but I do have a vast well of bitter observations and euphemisms filled from such a misguided event in my past, that I draw from whenever a piece calls for it. Meanwhile, I most certainly will look into applying it for a competitive purpose!


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