Writing The Night Sky: Vela

Date
Posted by
Comments0

Constellation Vela

I am the daily host over at VerseLove for today’s prompt, which is called Writing The Night Sky, and invites you to use constellations of stars as an inspiration for a poem of space and wonder.

Come join us.

Here is mine:

Vela
SQ2 30°N – 90°S

Your sisters of Heavenly Waters
await your return for an eternity
but solar winds fill your form,
and you remain mystery

Your children are seven,
a brood of starlings telling stories
of the Argo, the cargo of which
has long since been lost into myth

Your sphere of influence
envelopes the empty silence;
the Pencil, the Gum,
the Southern Ring sings inside you

Yet still, you dance and flutter, Vela,
a translucent sail in the night,
reminding us of flight,
a sky compass of remembering

More about Vela: https://www.constellation-guide.com/constellation-list/vela-constellation/

Peace (with deep space),
Kevi

CLMOOC Silent Sunday(s)

Date
Posted by
Comments0

Silent Sunday

Here are two Silent Sundays — both with a book theme. The first is from a mystery/detective story display inside a book store, and the other is a window display from another book store. My wife and I were away for the week so I posted the first from my phone, and am now catching up.

Silent Sunday

Peace (in pages),
Kevin

NWP Radio: My Interview With Rob Rokicki

Date
Posted by
Comments0

I had the privilege of interviewing Rob Rokicki for the National Writing Project’s Write Time Radio show. Rob is a musician and composer, who wrote the music and lyrics for a Broadway version of The Lightning Thief. We chatted about his work and how he composes, and the idea of story narrative in connection to music.

Peace (talking it out),
Kevin

Living In A Tilted World: A Fake Song From A Fake Band

Date
Posted by
Comments2

Wrecked Cottage Song

This morning’s prompt at DS106 Daily Create had to do with using an old Public Domain image of a bunch of men standing on the deck of an old, tilting house, and to imagine them as a band releasing a song. I used Canva to design their “single” track, which I called Living In A Tilted World.

I decided to go a step further, using the Suno AI Music site to create a fake song to go along with the fake band. I tried Suno out a few weeks ago and in that short time, I think it has gotten better with a new version of its algorithms (which is both fascinating and alarming, as a creative person worried about the intrusion of AI in our spaces).

I instructed Suno to produce:

an old sea shanty with the title of “living in a tilted world” about a house tilting into the ocean

Take a listen to the Suno single: Tilting Tides.

Catchy, right?

Peace (in the great fake out),
Kevi

Creating a Solar Eclipse Blackout Poem

Date
Posted by
Comments0

(NOTE: This post is a tutorial as part of Write Out, April 2024)
Solar Eclipse Blackout Poem

Here is one way to create a blackout/erasure poem, particularly when the Solar Eclipse comes through and the moon “erases” or “blackens out” part of the Sun. Get it?

For mine (above), I used some text generated by ChatGPT in which it explains what a Solar Eclipse is. You may want to find some other text or perhaps the Wendell Berry poem – To Know The Dark — as your main text.

This is what ChatGPT gave me for my activity:

A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes directly between the Earth and the sun, obscuring the sun’s entire disk and casting a shadow on Earth’s surface. This extraordinary celestial event unfolds as the moon aligns perfectly with the sun, blocking its light and creating a temporary darkness known as totality within a narrow path on Earth’s surface. During totality, the sun’s corona, the outermost layer of its atmosphere, becomes visible, appearing as a shimmering halo around the obscured sun. Total solar eclipses are rare and captivating phenomena that captivate observers with their awe-inspiring beauty and serve as a reminder of the intricate dance of celestial bodies in our solar system.

I took that text and put it into the Blackout Poetry Maker over at Glitch. It’s a simple site to use. Just add the main text, and then choose the words and phrases that you want to remain on the screen. You can either download the final poe

This is what I came up with:

Blackout Poem (raw)

I then went into Flickr’s Public Domain image search to find a Solar Eclipse image to use as a background image. I found one that I liked, a lot.

Solar Eclipse 2017
Solar Eclipse 2017 flickr photo by Jamie Kohns shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0)

Finally, I went into LunaPic — an online image editor — and used its Blender Tool (find it under Effects) to layer my Blackout Poem with the Solar Eclipse image, creating the final project (see above).

Peace (even when the sky goes dark),
Kevin