I’ve been thinking a lot about haiku poems lately. I find them delightful to read. They’re often incredibly specific while leaving plenty of room for the reader’s mind to fill in the blanks. I like that they’re short. I like that the form seems to shirk formality, even when playing by the rules. They’re familiar…

I’m taking this morning to share a few “works in progress” generated from prompts I’ve shared recently. My hope is that these prompts are just as generative for me as they might be for anyone else. The hardest part, of course, is actually sitting down to write. That’s what I tried to do this past…

Since moving back to Racine as an adult, I occasionally find myself in a place I recognize from the past, greeting me in a new way. This was the case when I recently found myself utilizing the Perry Ave. post office for the first time as an adult. I pulled up and instantly recognized the…

I’m making a more conscious effort to notice the good things in my days, the things that make me smile or stand out as uniquely beautiful, amidst the routine and the expected. Often, these things are small: a good night’s sleep, a fresh cup of coffee, animal tracks in the snow, a kind interaction at…

I love winter, but I always find myself forgetting how hard the season can feel. Grey days stretching on. Cold keeping people inside and isolated. But every now and then we get a blue sky day. The sun makes its way through the clouds and down to us. The morning light from the east warms…

I think the month gets cast in a bad light. Winter lingers on, the holiday season is essentially over. We’re all back to work, solidly into a new year, finding ourselves in rhythms again, whether we like it or not. At this time of year, Racine is somewhere between the bitterest cold and hints of…

I often find myself writing simple poems in the morning, when the world is quiet still and I am orienting toward the day. It happens as I’m watching the sunrise, watching the birds, letting my mind wander, with my notebook open. It’s often in these quiet windows of my days that I feel the urge…

I think one of my biggest hurdles to my own production is the belief that poetry is complicated. I want to start this offering of prompts by proposing this question: What if it’s not? Perhaps poetry exists alongside us, whether we notice it or not. I wish I noticed it more. So here’s a prompt…