How It Works

  1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

Bloom and Bloom

Here I’d assumed one poem about jacaranda blossoms
underfoot would be my lifetime quota. But that misses
the point, since I know I won’t know till I’m well in

or done what the thing is about, that filament, shred                                                         of incandescence, essence

to which, if anything can get close, it will be a poem feeling its way,
                                         talking to itself between silences.

I’m here for that, or in the next room, ear to the wall. Spendthrift
                                        world, it’s me again, listening hard,

talking you up, extolling your gullies and beetles, your bruised
blossoms on the pavement, the ones that bloom
and bloom even once they’re dust.

Catherine Abbey Hodges
https://catherineabbeyhodges.com/

The Read Around

If you wish to attend the read around (t’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional). Note: If you registered already, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:

Writing From The Inside Out


The next Read-Around is 10/8/26 at
5:00 PM PDT — 8:00 PM EDT

My Thoughts

There is an incandescence, a secret essence to things, that only a poem can get near. We blindly stumble over it every day in every day things, like blossoms underfoot, or the glint of iridescence from the wing of a dragonfly, or the silhouette of clouds kissing sunlight, or the touch of friendship in a moment of need. We miss the fragrance of beauty, fail to notice the ineffable softness at our fingertips, miss the taste of the sublime on the tip of our tongue. And yet there it is, all the time, all around us, waiting for us to open our heart and receive what is blooming around us. Poetry naturally emerges when we are lucky enough to catch the moment, perceptive enough to see into the moment, and persistent enough to codify the magic of the moment in words. Catherine Abbey Hodges does this In her poem, Bloom and Bloom. The poem is not just a one-off. Hodges is blessed with repeated inspiration from the simple experience of jacaranda blossoms underfoot . And this poem also does double duty as another poem about blossoms and seconds as the doorway to the essence of poetry itself. Sometimes, it is only by noticing and noticing again and again that we step through the doorway into the uncanny incandescence of life.

Prompt Ideas

  1. Journal or write a poem about walking with blossoms, or some other natural debris, underfoot

  2. Pick one of your own favorite poems and challenge yourself to write a second poem about the same kind of experience.

  3. Journal or write about the idea of having a quota of poems about a topic or experience. Is there a limit. How would you know you have reached that limit?

  4. In what way does creative writing talk to itself between silences and feel its way along? Use that idea as your prompt and feel your way through it.

  5. Hodges describes the world adds a Spendthrift and her relationship to it has "listening hard, talking you up, extolling your" virtues. Take whatever out of those lines inspires you: in what way has the world a spinthrift? How do you listen hard? What do you talk up? What about the world are you willing to praise enthusiastically?

  6. As usual, write about whatever else inspires you form the poem or from life.