Writing in Form: The Prose Poem

Nancy Flynn Apostrophe Blog Archive, Poetic Form, Publication News, Writing

I started my creative writing journey in the wilds of prose, specifically fiction. My SUNY-Binghamton graduate school classes concentrated on fiction; my master’s thesis was a novel-in-progress. Even when I started making the shift to writing more poetry, I still dabbled in the prose poem—it felt familiar and doable to me. According to the Poetry Foundation, a prose poem is “a prose composition that, while not broken into verse lines, demonstrates other traits such as symbols, metaphors, and other figures of speech common to poetry.”

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Judging a Poetry Contest…

Nancy Flynn Apostrophe Blog Archive, Awards, Writing, Writing Contests

In Fall 2012, I volunteered to be the judge for the New Poets category of the Oregon Poetry Association (OPA) contests. The OPA definition of a new poet is someone with no more than two poems published in print or online journals. Anything self-published or posted on a personal website or blog also counts as published…

 
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Publication News: “A Month of Sundays”

Nancy Flynn Apostrophe Blog Archive, Publication News, Writing

“A Month of Sundays” is a freewheeling, leaping, highly experimental poem that glories in sonics and sound. In it, I took the English names for every month of the calendar year, fractured them into syllables then refashioned them into the language used in a dozen quatrains, beginning and ending with the month of July. I remember it was fun to write

 
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Poems Can Also Be Short!

Nancy Flynn Apostrophe Blog Archive, Gardening, Poetic Form, Publication News, Writing, Writing Contests

My husband and I are avid gardeners. Every year, our community garden plot near the Woodlawn Elementary School is 400 square feet of asparagus, beets, carrots, delicata squash, leeks, peas, peppers, pole beans, potatoes, spinach, tomatoes, green and yellow wax bush beans, and some years even zucchini. Often we grow heirloom varieties…

 
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Publication News: “Evidence, Occurrence”

Nancy Flynn Apostrophe Blog Archive, Art Exhibit, Publication News, Writing

This ekphrastic, free-verse poem was inspired by Dianne Kornberg’s photographs of kelp from the University of Washington’s marine algae Herbarium in her exhibit “evidence of its occurrence” at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, Oregon, 2005…

 
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Award News: Oregon Poetry Association Fall 2023 Contest

Nancy Flynn Apostrophe Blog Archive, Awards, Publication News, Writing

My poem, “Learning to See,” won Third Place in the Theme—Ekphrasis category of the Oregon Poetry Association’s Fall 2023 Contest. I wrote about this poem in a recent Apostrophe Blog post, explaining the concept of Ekphrastic Poetry and how I came to write this particular poem….

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Award News: Oregon Poetry Association Fall 2023 Contests

Nancy Flynn Apostrophe Blog Archive, Awards, Publication News, Writing

I just found out this morning that two of my poems have been awarded Third Place in two categories of the Oregon Poetry Association Fall 2023 adult contests. The first, “provenance,” has placed in the Members Only category—the category name explains itself….

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Hitting the Honorable Mention Jackpot

Nancy Flynn Apostrophe Blog Archive, Awards, Publication News

In the Spring 2023 Oregon Poetry Association poetry contests, I got three honorable mentions for some of my newer poems. Now to find publication homes for them! Here’s the skinny: Honorable Mention for “Of the Wild Bees Living in a Tree in the Alley” in the Wildlife Themed Category…

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