Get Your Golden Shovel! No. 04 (a collaborative series)

This is an invitation to all of you poets (or potential poets, which is all of you) out there to join me in a collaborative series I’m calling “Get Your Golden Shovel”. Here is how it works.

Each Saturday in February (as an initial experiment and then I’ll decide whether to continue), will be Golden Shovel Saturday. I’ll post a prompt consisting of one or two lines from a well known poem on Saturday, then we all will create a new poem using the Golden Shovel form and share it with each other. I think it will be very interesting to see how different each of our pieces are despite pulling from the same source of material.

What is the Golden Shovel form, you ask? The Golden Shovel form was created by the poet Terrance Hayes, whose poem “Golden Shovel” (from his 2010 collection Lighthead) is based on Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” which references the phrase “Golden Shovel”. Check out the “rules” here. There is also an example provided.

If you missed the earlier prompts, check out all the contributions from the community in the Week 1 Round-Up, Week 2 Round-Up, and Week 3 Round-Up. Feel free to contribute yours anytime. They were great poem line prompts with lots of creative potential.

Here’s our fourth (and final, for now) prompt. Enjoy!

Golden Shovel No. 04

“The sky is blue, or the rain falls with its spills of pearl.”

from “Spring” by Mary Oliver

You can either post on your own blog and link to the prompt post so that we can all see it and further share, include it in the prompt post’s comments section, or post on twitter and tag me (@montyvern).

While there is not any hard deadline, the intention is to share your Golden Shovel poem during the prompt week before the following Golden Shovel Saturday. I’ll target posting my own poem along with some of yours with links in a round-up post ahead of the following week’s prompt.

That’s it! I’m looking forward to seeing what we all come up. It should be a bit challenging, but hopefully fun.

In this weeks round-up, I’ll share my thoughts on the future of the “Get Your Golden Shovel” collaboration.

Be well,

Monty

• Under the Earth’s ShadowJanuary 29, 2023
  I lay awake under the earth’s shadowGentle breathing curled at my feetA companion in this darknessHolding guard against The cold reality and coming lightFor I’mContinue reading “Under the Earth’s Shadow”
• Blue HeronJanuary 25, 2023
  Be well, Monty
• Endure MeJanuary 24, 2023
  Endure meEndure my cold feet under the sheetsEndure my rough breaths sawing through the night’s airMy tossing and turningMy hogging all the blanketsMy nightmare kicksMyContinue reading “Endure Me”
• DepartingJanuary 23, 2023
  Be well, Monty
• Scenes from TodayJanuary 12, 2023
  These are untouched photographs from today’s walk on Bainbridge Island, Washington (just applied a simple frame). Be well, Monty