Bottle, or: Soda water

A Dinggedicht

W3 poetry prompt

For this week’s W3, Srijita (Hope) encourages to compose a dinggedicht poem, which enters so deeply into a thing that the thing seems to speak for itself through image, texture, movement, and sensation alone. For more details, click here.

Let’s write poetry together!

When it comes to partnership, some humans can make their lives alone – it’s possible. But creatively, it’s more like painting: you can’t just use the same colours in every painting. It’s just not an option. You can’t take the same photograph every time and live with art forms with no differences.

Would you like to create poetry with me and have a completed poem of yours featured here at the Skeptic’s Kaddish? I am very excited to have launched the ‘Poetry Partners’ initiative and am looking forward to meeting and creating with you… Check it out!

W3 Prompt #211: Wea’ve Written Weekly

Intro

Dear friends,

Welcome to our W3 Poetry Prompt, which goes live on Wednesdays at The Skeptic’s Kaddish.

You may click here for a fuller explanation of W3; but here’s the ‘tldr’ version:

Part I

The main ingredient of W3 is a weekly poem written by a Poet of the Week (PoW), which participants read before participating in the prompt.

Part II

The second ingredient is a writing guideline (or two) provided by the PoW. Guidelines may include, but are not limited to: word counts, poetic forms, inclusion of specific words, and use of particular poetic devices.

Part III

After five days, when the prompt closes, the PoW shall select one participant’s poem as the W3 prompt for the following week, and its author becomes the next PoW.

Simple enough, right?

Okie dokie ~ Let’s do this thing!

I. The prompt poem:

‘Flood Tide’ by Srijita (Hope)

II. Hope’s prompt: Be the thing

Write a Dinggedicht: a poem that enters so deeply into a thing that the thing seems to speak for itself through image, texture, movement, and sensation alone.

Choose anything: an object, animal, plant, machine, weather pattern, body part, or natural phenomenon. Describe it from the inside out. Let its physical reality guide the poem: its weight, surface, rhythm, sounds, habits, decay, memory.

You may lean into the surreal. Let the thing dream, contradict itself, remember what it should not remember, or behave in ways that defy logic. But keep the poem grounded in the thing’s material presence. The strangeness should emerge naturally from the object itself, not feel imposed upon it.

Do not explain what the thing symbolizes. Let the thing be the meaning.

Guidelines

• Stay rooted in concrete imagery and sensory detail
• Avoid abstract explanation whenever possible
• Surreal elements are welcome if they grow organically from the thing itself
• Free verse or rhyme are both welcome
• 10–20 lines

Tips

• Try not to name the thing’s symbolic meaning directly; let the reader discover it through the experience of the poem
• For an example of the form, see Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Panther”

III. Submit: Click on ‘Mister Linky’ below

In order to participate and share a poem, open up this blog post, outside of the WordPress reader. At the bottom, just below these words, you will see a small rectangular graphic with the words ‘Mr Linky’. Click on that to submit.

Submissions are open for 5 days, until Monday, May 18, 10:00 AM (GMT+2)

Last week’s W3 poem

This week’s W3 prompt poem (above), composed by Hope, was written in response to last week’s W3 prompt poem, which Dawn wrote:

‘Breath of Life’ by Dawn Minott

Nicht vergessen: #Trinken bei der Hitze!

Passend dazu ein bekanntes #Dinggedicht

Conrad Ferdinand Meyer: Der römische Brunnen (1882)

Aufsteigt der Strahl und fallend gießt
Er voll der Marmorschale Rund,
Die, sich verschleiernd, überfließt
In einer zweiten Schaale Grund;
Die zweite giebt, sie wird zu reich,
Der dritten wallend ihre Flut,
Und jede nimmt und giebt zugleich
Und strömt und ruht.