Writers Lab: 20 Projects to Make a Poem

Riffing off of Monday’s Storybelly Digest, I want us to take a break from the hot summertime, big-picture, thinking-thinking-thinking work of writing a Mission Statement, Vision Statement, and Core Values. Let’s take a breather from that focused, foundational work and let’s have some fun… some nonsensical and yet oh-so-sensical, fizzy-even, fun.

An exercise my mentor Nancy Johnson gave us years ago was to take a poem by poet Jim Simmerman (1952-2006) as inspiration and write what she called “20 Projects to Make a Poem” or, as Simmerman named the exercise, “20 Little Poetry Projects.”

I did this exercise in 1996 and turned it into Love, Ruby Lavender, my first novel, which was published in 2001. I submitted it — in its 20 projects form (sans numbered lines) — as a picturebook manuscript that intrigued Liz Van Doren at Harcourt Brace. She called me (after my ten years of rejections, everywhere I sent my stories) and said, “I really like it; are you willing to work on it?”

cover art by Marla Frazee

Was I willing? I want to write “You bet your a** I was!” but I have too much class for that. Not. I was willing, and Liz was willing, and — over time — that poem got longer and longer, fizzier and fizzier, until it turned into a novel — that’s a story for another day, but I will say that this novel is beloved (I can say that, yes?) and has sold almost a half million copies in its 24 years in print. Who knows where a fizzy little poem may take you?

For now, Lab Coats, let’s get to writing 20 projects poems!

If you’re reading this as a free subscriber (welcome, welcome, glad to have you!) and if you want to write with us this summer as well, you can sign up for the Lab here, for a month, or a year, whatever suits you, and drop in anytime.

Onward:

Your poem will be in 20 lines, with directions I’m going to give you for each line. When you’re finished, you’re going to have something fabulous, and you’ll have it without too much thinking-thinking-thinking.

That’s the beauty of a 20 projects poem. Let it flow and put down whatever comes to you, within the parameters you’re given. You may love it so much you do two of these or three — and I am hoping you’ll share them with us.

Here are the “rules,” along with Jim Simmerman’s 20 projects poem: “Moon Go Away, I Don’t Love You No More,” and then my 20 projects poem that turned into Love, Ruby Lavender, originally titled “We All Be Jovie, and That’s the Truth!”

THE ASSIGNMENT:

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