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In honor of poetry month, we're going to be discussing poetry all this week on 2k8, including our favorite poets, poems and inspirations. We may even get a little original poetry from some of our members! Poetry, like all writing, begins with words; words that inspire, create an image or evoke an emotion. Join the class of 2k8 as we celebrate words, poetry and poets!

Today we begin with Zu Vincent, author of The Lucky Place, who penned an article about one of her inspirations, Susan Wooldridge. Says Zu: "Her writing is so evocative and she's very passionate about it. She is always keeping a journal, she carries one wherever she goes and fills it with bits of found objects, stray words and thoughts until the journals become like personal poems in themselves."

poemcrazy by Zu Vincent

“I can’t stand to lose anything,” writes author Susan Wooldridge in her collection of essays on the poet’s tools, poemcrazy, freeing your life with words. “That’s part of what writing is all about for me….if I put words in poems, I can begin to see my value.”

And helping others see their value through words is what poemcrazy is all about. The book evolved as she gave poetry workshops in schools, juvenile halls and libraries around the country, and found “poetry was being damaged by the way it was taught.”

Instead, she wanted to bring joy back into words. To give people permission to express their deepest feelings. By “tricking people into using imagery and metaphor to discover their voice without even knowing they were writing,” she says, she was able to get amazing results.



Poemcrazy has proved so popular it’s now in its 20th printing. And Wooldridge’s second book Fool’s Gold: Making Something From Nothing also cuts close to the creative bone.

“…Not only do I discover I exist when I write poems,” Wooldridge writes in poemcrazy’s chapter, ‘Catching Myself.’ “I learn I’m larger than I thought. I extend up to where the air gets thin and down into the earth’s core near the red hot spots.”

That chapter was, for Wooldridge, a lot like poetry itself. “It’s one simple page I whittled down from twelve,” she says. “I was trying to tap why I wrote, what is really going on here.”

She finds that distillation is often the process of writing, especially poetry. But you have to let yourself expand, first. “Let things build up,” she says. “I notice that when I have a dripping faucet, by accident, this brief little drip will eventually fill the sink.”



Susan Wooldridge


Tomorrow we feature some original poetry from the Class of 2k8. Until then, what are you waiting for? Go write a poem!

a friend sent this DML-J quote to me this week and it's so encouraging and inspiring, I thought you'd want to read it, too...

"Frequently there comes a point at which development and advance seem to have come to an end and we are in some kind of doldrums when it is difficult to know whether the work is moving at all, either backwards or forwards. All seems to be at a standstill and nothing seems to be taking place...we are considering people who are not so much tired of the work as tired in it... What shall we say about it and what shall we do about it? Let me say at the outset that there is no aspect of this great problem of depression in which negatives are more important than they are on this particular occasion. Whoever we are found in this position of weariness, before we begin to do anything positive, there are certain negatives that are absolutely all-important.

"The first is this: Whatever you may feel about it do not consider the suggestion that comes to you from all directions - not so much from people, but from within yourself, the voices that seem to be speaking around and about you - do not listen to them when they suggest that you should give up, or give way, or give in. That is a great temptation that comes at this point. You say, 'I am weary and tired, the thing is too much for me.' And there is nothing to say at that point but this negative - do not listen. You always have to start with these 'don'ts' on the very lowest level; and that is the lowest level. You must say to yourself, 'whatever happens I am going on.'

"You do not give in or give way."

— Dr David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981)