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Prompt eight: The future!

While thinking about the future isn’t always fun, it’s a crucial part of self care. They say that if you can concretize the future—make it specific, make it real to you—then maybe you can be grounded in those possibilities and outcomes. 

This year, it has been hard enough to think more than a few days ahead. Our prompt for this week doesn’t ask you to think too far beyond that. We’re hoping that you’ll think about what you might do on an upcoming day: tomorrow, the day after, this weekend... and then write a poem enumerating those steps, taking us on a journey that has not yet happened. 

Good luck! 

[quarantine-university]

Prompt seven: tasty meals

On this blog, we take food very seriously. Meals were one of those things that—in the time before quarantine—had this seemingly incommensurable power to bring people together. We miss those days. We miss all kinds of holiday meals, and dinners out and at home, and lunches shared among friends. Even just a few hours working indoors at a coffee shop would be nice.

Now, food means something different. It’s both an opportunity for pleasure and a necessary mechanism for self-sustenance and self-preservation. When we think about self care, one of the most impactful elements is how the food we eat shapes our feelings, senses, and thoughts. It’s true: a hearty meal makes all the difference. 

This week, while we’re thinking about food, our request is simple... Cook something. It can be anything, truly. Then, once the cooking is done, tell us [in a poem, as always] what it was like to cook, to eat; we want to read the story of a meal... Of a moment of care. While our preference is that your poem take the form, in one way or another, of a recipe, we’re rather flexible. 

Bon appétit! 

[quarantine-university]

Prompt six: value close relationships

Self care is, by most definitions, a solitary pursuit. Last week, when we were thinking about meditation, we requested a pointed focus on an object—we asked that you let something capture your attention, and then that you let your attention sink into it. 

This week, we’re more interested in what happens when our self care procedures involve appreciating those around us and prioritizing our close relationships. What does it mean to prioritize a close relationship, anyway? How do we give our time to others without depriving ourselves of attention and love? 

Thus, the prompt is as follows: We’re hoping that, at some point this week, you’ll write a two (or more!) voice poem. A two-voice poem can be conversational, dynamic, visually challenging... The options are, as usual, endless. The voices can belong to anyone—But if you can, recall that our focus is self care and personal relationships. 

Best wishes for the week, and let us know what you find.

[quarantine-university]

Prompt five: meditate ?!

Meditation is so much more complicated than a person may expect or anticipate. There isn’t just one way to meditate; from mindfulness to focusing on one object, there are countless ways to train your attention and awareness and, in the process of doing so, remain calm.

(Of course, meditation has a special-yet-problematic place in the United States. Visibly, Asian meditative practices have been appropriated into random parts of public life without the inclusion of context, proper homage, or spirituality. Yet, lots of other cultures and religions do incorporate varying forms of mindfulness. We just think that the history of appropriation is something to be wary of when trying out meditation for the first time.)

This week, as we’re thinking about a lot of big and scary things (cough, cough, Election Day and all that follows it), peace of mind seems like a silly impossibility. Self care guides tell us that meditation works, so we’re gonna try it, too.

For the prompt, we’re asking you to write a poem that focuses on a single object. There are, as usual, lots of ways to do this—Write the whole poem about one object, or keep bringing the same object back over the course of the poem, or something else of the same sort. See how focusing on one object impacts your thoughts, anxieties, and so on. And then let us know how it went.

[quarantine-university]

Prompt four: hydrate, hydrate!

It’s the oldest cliche in the book—someone says that they’re having a tough time, and someone else tells them to drink a glass of water. Okay, maybe that’s not the oldest cliche; it’s also not the best or empathetic response to difficult life experiences. However, we can all agree that staying hydrated is a commonplace approach to wellness. Why?

Water does more for you and your body than you may realize. From body temperature to blood pressure, countless bodily functions are monitored and manipulated when you drink water. And anyway, if you’ve ever been parched on a hot day or taken a sip of water after a good workout, then you probably have some sense of how good it feels to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.

We’re honoring the good and the bad of hydration this week. Think, if you will, about water: do you like it? Do you hate it? Do you have a reusable water bottle? Are you a swimmer? Reflecting very broadly on the idea of water—of hydration, of ocean, of rain, of anything in this category—please compose a poem in any form (it would be great, of course, if the form is experimentally water-related too). 

Send your work to us to be considered for a cash prize at the end of the fall! And please, while you’re writing, drink a glass of water. It will make you feel better (? maybe ?). 

[quarantine-university]

Prompt three: Intuition is everything

A lot of what makes self care good and possible is that, at the end of the day, our bodies and minds know what they need. Although high anxiety in times like these makes intuition difficult, our ability to “just know” often makes a huge difference in our daily lives. Sometimes, we don’t even realize how automatic our responses are to the world around us.

But what about writing? To many, certain creative processes are far from intuitive. Negative thoughts are especially able to get in the way of a creative drive. Then again, that can only be when we are trying to write intentionally... It’s a whole different story when writing is automatic.

This week, we’ll be messing with intuitive writing by taking on an automatic writing challenge. You’ll need a pen or pencil (or marker or crayon) and a piece of paper. Step-by-step, here’s how you do this:

First, put on something you like to listen to. This could be a podcast, an audiobook, an album, a playlist, or even the audio of your favorite film. 

Then, try to ‘tune out’ the audio input so that you’re zoning out. 

As you start to space out more and more, put your writing implement on the page and begin to write. Don’t write about anything in particular—just see what happens when, without thinking about writing, you somehow write anyway. 

Please do not look at the page while you are doing this exercise! 

Once you’ve done this for a while—maybe fifteen, maybe twenty minutes—cease your efforts and look at what you have. Using the text you’ve produced, pare it down into a poem. 

Good luck! Happy writing! And, of course, be sure to send us what you create!

[quarantine-university]

Prompt two: Self care is physical

Quarantine has often been imagined as an exclusively ‘indoor’ lifestyle, but individuals around the world have found ways to incorporate local walks into their day-to-day. This has been possible in some places more than others—for example, when fires swept across California, Oregon, Washington, and elsewhere in the west, going outside for leisure and exercise ceased to be an option. For the most part, however, walks are a lovely counter to a mentality that may otherwise keep us inside all day. 

This week, we’re asking. you to go for some kind of outing. Obviously, keep it public health-conscious, but do interpret outing in the way that works best for you: a walk, a drive, a local errand with friends. 

When you send us the resulting writing, we’d like for it to be observational. That means you should be intent on describing what you see and find on your outing. Observational does not necessarily mean descriptive; there is no need to write superfluous details or share an excess of information. Strive for some kind of balance, and take us with you.

[quarantine-university]

Self care: An intro and first prompt

Welcome back to the fall 2020 session of Quarantine University. ‘Summer break’ was a chaotic stress fest, and this semester is likely to be no different for those of us in school, taking a break from school, working in educational settings, and so on.

Thus, we would like to announce a self care writing challenge that will run for the next eight weeks of the year. Each Monday, we will post a prompt that includes (1) a suggested act of self care and (2) a writing prompt associated with it. In the past, we have emphasized the connection between ‘act’ and ‘art,’ namely that what you do can deeply impact what you create—this time, we want to make that connection even more concrete, and inspire individuals to take on these challenges with the intention of writing good, good poetry from it.

Thanks to a grant from the Brown Arts Initiative, we will be able to offer prizes to the best three poems that we receive from this challenge. If you are a university employee, a university student (currently enrolled or on leave), or a high school student, then you are eligible to win these prizes, which carry a monetary value.

Now, onto the first prompt of the challenge: 

Part of self care is creating strong boundaries in the workplace. This year, with the advent of Zoom and mandatory e-learning, many traditional boundaries have been circumvented. All types of work follow us everywhere. 

So, this week, we would like you to think about the boundaries you have between your school work, your teachers, your students, your job(s)... How have you built them? How can you strive to build them better? 

Then, for the poem you send us, we would like your writing to be driven by ‘maps and boundaries.’ Please use maps, ‘geospatial’ writing, and illustrations to let us know how you feel about boundaries and self care. 

You can take this prompt in any direction you want (wink, wink). Send us the result and any questions you may have.

[quarantine-university]

Tune for a Lonely Man // Violeta Orozco

I’m sorry This has been your life,  I sit  at the foot of your hospital bed helpless and slumped  thinking what  can I say to soothe  your ancient pain I’ve always felt futile at the foot of death What can I say better than this faceless silence breaking between us I am sorry your life has been this awkward fumbling  in an unfamiliar place. You know  I never felt at home either.  It is you who is dying  and yet I am close to your age now I am a threshold letting in the light The sun is leaking like a blood-soaked rag. I should not say this,  there are nicer things to say to a dying man. It doesn’t help  to know that a strange plague Is felling millions  like a quiet rage burning through the upturned sky. My forehead boils in shame as if I had only come to reassure myself I am a survivor  that cannot share the spoils.

Violeta Orozco (Mexico City, 1989). Bilingual poet, translator and essayist. Author of El cuarto de la luna (Literal, 2020). She is currently a Ph.D. student in Hispanic Literature and Culture in Rutgers University, where she researches Chicana and Mexican poets. She studied her Masters in Spanish Literature in Ohio University and her BA. in Philosophy and English Literature in Mexico City. Her first poetry book in English, The Sleepless Generation will be published soon by Andante Books. She also is translating Hamid Larbi’s Le reflets du verbe (2019) and is curating and translating a bilingual anthology of feminist American poets active in the seventies. Her organization SpeakupwoMen brings together poets in Athens, Ohio to oppose gender violence through performance and spoken word.

[quarantine-university]

echo prompt

after 129 days spent distantly together, my best friend left town on saturday. after a physically distanced dinner in her backyard, I found myself walking home alone, on the same route I took when I last wrote about light on this blog. in front of a six-bedroom house that was still being built, the moon caught my eye.

I know from a certain trick with written Hebrew letters how to distinguish waxing and waning moons; this one was waxing. and it was magnificent: big, yellow-tinged, with the faintest hint of humid haze. I found myself thinking not only of the last moon I wrote about, likely a full moon cycle ago, but also of the last time I wrote about a waxing moon specifically, in a poem from nearly seven months ago. the world was a different place, but the poem was about another situation of departure, of parting. back then, I was the one leaving. now, I am the one being left.

the evening was full of strange and melancholy echoes, parallels to other times full of other worries. and so begins this my challenge to you this week: write a poem that is full of echoes.  take a poem from a moment in the past that you feel is particularly resonant and rewrite it with style and content from the present. in effect, perform an english-to-english, past-to-present translation. don’t be afraid to distort; it is only an echo, after all.

enjoy and good luck –

-SA

[quarantine-university]

a fedex prompt

lately, my life has been in disarray—not substantially so, but the devil is in the details, and in this case, the details are exactly what’s responsible for my steady unravelling. it reminded me, shira, of when your letter was returned to sender—last week’s prompt and my early week meanderings. 

so. i had decided to try one of those ‘weird foods’ grocery delivery services (theoretically it combats food waste, but it also doesn’t do much to address food waste, and i’m likely to unsubscribe just on principle). it was supposed to arrive on thursday; i tracked the package as it left watsonville and made its way to my city. but... mysteriously... mid-afternoon, hours before it was due to arrive, the status changed to pending, and the box didn’t reach my doorstep for twenty four more hours. 

even stranger, when the box did arrive, the status update didn’t change. hence, the box is somehow both at my apartment AND in the status of an object before it has been delivered. (i still have the fedex tracking window open on my computer; i had checked it often, more often.)

in short: i would like to know where the box went for that day when it disappeared. rather, i would like to imagine what a box of onions can do when no one is looking. in fact, i am curious as to the question, very broadly, of ‘where things go,’ and what it means for us to try and track them.

so, prompt options for the coming week are as follows...

1. tell me, just tell me, where the box went. i’m so eager to know.

2. there’s this poem called robert bly called “driving to town to mail a letter.” i challenge you to engage with this poem by rearranging and changing it: copy and paste the poem three times and then, with the first iteration, do an s+5. second iteration should be an s+7. third will be an s+9. 

huzzah! here’s to mail! 

-rl

[quarantine-university]

this poem will not take you anywhere

choose a path (one 1, one 2, one 3, one 4, one 5) to get a sense of california. or read it in one line. or don’t: 

1a. 

words acquire their meaning relative to other words in a category

by extension then if east is east and west is west, then a palm 

2a.

tree’s frilled silhouette is a symbol of some other phrase

denoting a state where the desert and ocean conjoin to form

2b. 

grasping at another palm means little else than a want to connect

across these useless and frantic places. i was looking for

3a. 

the shore’s coalition, small cafes with sandy outcroppings 

and naval academies gated in, the grass yellowed by a footstep.

3b. 

a place where memory can thrive. in oxnard, when the sun set

over the water and dogs were running rampant, i knew

3c. 

a better way of surviving the heat. the sweat beads curse 

the parts of my shoulders attacked by sun, cannot be soothed.

3d. 

this secret to leaving: masked at the airport, strangers huddled

in estrangement at the baggage claim, and i sought out a suitcase.

4a. 

i had found something else, a thing beyond all imaginings. 

a set of categories where no words could stay, and no

5a. 

mindsets could be changed, and the waves ahead

continued to sweep the ocean floor.

5b. 

cafes, none were open anyway, none, and the evening broke

into millions of pieces in protest.

5c. 

images could stick, and the evening broke

again and again and again and again

into pieces.

5d.

pieces no pieces were saved from this memory

and the moving lifted all but the core of me to somewhere else.

-R.L

a response to a misdirected prompt

[quarantine-university]

a misdirected prompt

today I received a letter which had taken an extra week to arrive due to a mistake in my zipcode. a red USPS stamp read “PLEASE ADVISE CORRESPONDENT OF YOUR CORRECT ADDRESS.” meanwhile, many of my friends are in the process of moving across the country post-graduation, whether partway or coast-to-coast.

so this week’s prompt is about misdirection and address. as usual, 2 options:

write a poem that ends up in the wrong place. use enjambment to your favor; cross lexical fields and linguistic boundaries. use images if you so desire. where did you plan to go? where did you end up?

write a piece that notifies its correspondent of your correct address. this could be a piece about moving, about a place which was yours but is no longer, about a future place you wish to go. medium is up to you, but please incorporate letter writing conventions into your piece.

enjoy, and good luck with your move!

-SA

[quarantine-university]

Presenting: An Evening Reading with Domenica Martinello!

REGISTER HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/an-evening-reading-with-domenica-martinello-tickets-111823414844

Join us for the second reading of our summer series! We will be welcoming Domenica Martinello for a sweet summery poetry reading, followed by a Q&A.

Domenica is a writer from Montréal, Quebec and the author of All Day I Dream about Sirens (Coach House Books, 2019). She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was the recipient of the Deena Davidson Friedman Prize for Poetry. In 2017 she was a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and the winner of the carte blanche 3Macs Prize for a genre-bending work of literary criticism on Elena Ferrante. Poems from her next book, GOOD WANT, are forthcoming in The Walrus and The Fiddlehead, and have appeared in Maisonneuve and The Columbia Review. Domenica likes mythology, makeup, and video games. You can find the rest of her bio and read her poetry at http://www.domenicamartinello.com/

This reading will be conducted over Zoom. A link will be sent out to all registrants shortly before the event.

From our Zoom living room to yours, this reading is organized by Shira & Rachel of Poems from a University Quarantine as part of the Poetry is for Summers reading series and workshop. More information here: https://quarantine-university.tumblr.com/summer

[quarantine-university]

Poem with an Ocean in the Middle

[each side of this poem may be read as a poem in itself; so may the poem as a whole]

in the eyes of odd blue & [                ] bagged brown mulch on expansive green /

betrayal to the oddly cold ground [                         ] itself an inadequate gravity /

a closing door a desire for [                          ] flowering flags that guard a bright /

room, no shutter blinds [                                                            ] smiling hubbub /

by baggage claims [                                           ] no uniform by the steel barrier /

sweaty palms & cruel heat [                           ] countered by an A/C blast inside /

today we do not wish for ice [                          ] we wish for sunned walks while /

my father prints a letter saying [          ] mothers stand alone in the olive groves /

once I too was there yes [       ] the trees braiding a song of allergies and sweat /

once I too belonged to the brokenhearted [                ] children playing ghostlike between the rows.

-SA

a response to Monday’s prompt.

[quarantine-university]

The Soul Selects Her Social Distance (with apologies to Emily Dickinson) // Felicia Nimue Ackerman

The soul selects her own society,   Then shuts the door. She keeps her social distance of Six feet or more. Unmoved, she notes the careless crowd Outside her gate; Unmoved, she notes the feckless folk Still tempting fate. I’ve known her from those foolish people Choose none Then turn her mind to friends she’s meeting By phone.

[This poem was previously published in The New York Times and The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin.]

Felicia Nimue Ackerman is a professor of philosophy at Brown. She has had about 190 poems published, in places including American Atheist, The American Scholar, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education,  Free Inquiry, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Providence Journal, Scientific American, Time Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal.

[quarantine-university]

a monday prompt

i went to the dentist today to pick up a new night guard (turns out i grind my teeth at night, one of many ways to exist in a body without realizing the rules of it). it’s fascinating to think of all the ways misaligned edges lead to tension. whether a tectonic plate or the edges of my molars, the shifting of surfaces erodes what is into pieces that are smaller.

for this week’s challenge, please write a poem that /sticks its edges to itself and all around/, as in:

write two separate, distinct, readable poems that, when combined, erode into a meaning that is fundamentally different from the poems on either side of each other

and to keep with the spirit of the season, the subject of both poems (right and left) should be some combination of patriotism and sweat. good luck.

RL