Memoir Prompts from Poetry

Workshop ideas.

On Sunday, I unearthed an old notebook, that had been tucked away in my desk. I opened it, leafed through and found a poem that I’d copied out, and on the lines beneath it, my response to the title, which I’d scribbled in prose.

The poem is Ancestors - by one of my favourite poets, Ada Limon. It’s a poem, sometimes used in workshops, to inspire writing about belonging and place.

Ancestors

I’ve come here from the rocks, the bonelike chert,
            obsidian, lava rock. I’ve come here from the trees—

chestnut, bay laurel, toyon, acacia, redwood, cedar,

one thousand oaks
            that bend with moss and old man’s beard.
I was born on a green couch on Carriger Road between
            the vineyards and the horse pasture.

I don’t remember what I first saw, the brick of light
            that unhinged me from the beginning. I don’t remember

my brother’s face, my mother, my father.

Later, I remember leaves, through car windows,
through bedroom windows, through the classroom window,

the way they shaded and patterned the ground, all that
            power from roots. Imagine you must survive

without running? I’ve come from the lacing patterns of leaves,            

I do not know where else I belong.

Here is part of my response, that I've transcribed from the scribble.

I come from water, from sea-shell at the edge of the tide, the mystery of arrival and disappearance. Before I was born, a tiny, white-bodied ghost crab, sunk unknowing in the mud. I come from quicksand that swallows you whole. Out there by the lighthouse is where it lurks, a liquification that cannot support weight, that you cannot escape. I come from black timber and kelp and houses on stilts, from winter flood and Summerland, from inland seas, mump, burrow, withy and rhyne. I come from the rain and wind, heads bent struggling up College Rd to the seafront, to catch the bus to school.

I come from clay where roses grow, and strawberries ripen under nets hidden from cabbage whites and caterpillar. I come from brick sheds and dark alleyways between council houses, from fences of diamond netting, rubbish snagged in it like silvery fish. I come from the roofless grey buildings of warehouse, from rafters and hook. I come from cowslip fields bunches and bunches and no thought not to pick. Up on the riverbank, east of us Bland's Timber Yard and the Wharf, the whine of the circular saw. To the west the pill box, the estuary and mud as far as the eye can see, drying and cracking in a white heat....I don't remember leaving for the north just the hills and the shadows they cast. The way they take up the sky leaving nothing to guess and no way through.

Where do you come from? Write your own response to Ada Limon's poem, in whatever form you choose, begin, I come from… Include what you DON’T remember.

In the same notebook, I found another great poem that had launched me into prose, (and incidentally into another poem, Fire, which is not memoir, but appears in my prison collection Going in with Flowers,) this time the poem is by Marie Howe, from her stunning collection, What the Living Do, (described by the Boston Globe, as the ‘poetry of intimacy, witness, honesty and relation,’ ) the poem is The Boy, it ends in these verses:

What happened in our house taught my brothers how to leave, how to walk
down a sidewalk without looking back.

I was the girl. What happened taught me to follow him, whoever he was,
calling and calling his name.

I wrote a lot, not really for these pages - so this is just a small extract.

What happened in our house, was the night, the cats on the gate post, a curtained room, the tip-toe of being, the crying, the suicidal ideation, the never ending symphony of tears, the baby that went missing, a sewing machine and tap dancing on the kitchen floor. What happened in our house taught me I didn't know what child was, that outside in the cowslip fields, that was the best of it...

What happened in your house? Take it away… begin, What happened in our house…

I hope these poems and prompts, that I’ve found so useful, have inspired you to write or at least to read more of Ada Limon and Marie Howe’s poems.

As always, thanks for reading

Avril x