Poetry Friday

Poetry Friday: Field Notes in My Pockets

March 18, 2022 /

Today’s Poetry Friday is over at Ruth’s blog: “There is No Such Thing as a God-forsaken Town.” 

One of my favorite tools as a writer are my Field Notes journals. They are small and lightweight and perfect for jotting down notes on the run. I have them in every bag and in pockets of all of my jackets.

The problem with having notebooks of all kinds strewn about in clothing and in bags and on tables is that, at some point, you have to gather them up and make sure you transfer them into something else. At the end of every single month, I do a “Month-in-Review.” I have a checklist of things that I do to wrap up that month of writing. I total up my time spent on each project, I type up the books I’ve read, and organize my mentor texts lists by topic. But I also collect all of the notebooks and bring them to my desk. I sort through them. Sometimes they contain whole poems that I type up. Sometimes they just have fragments of an idea. I try to put them in a more permanent place so I don’t forget them. 

How do you collect your bits of words along the way? 

Haiku of the Week

I’ve been taking “hike and sketch” workshops through my local parks and recreation department. A recent one I went to was about writing poetry. I wrote this haiku while in the class. The photo (taken from a distance with my iphone, so I apologize for the poor quality) just doesn’t capture the geese who were splashing wildly during the entire class. 

What I’m Reading

I’ve been fascinated by Irene Latham’s book THIS POEM IS A NEST ever since it came out. She uses one poem as a nest to make all of the other poems in the book. It’s truly a stunning work! It is a great way to share poetry with children and how words can be arranged in so many ways to make different poems. But it’s also a master class for anyone writing poetry as an adult. 

I also recommended the book on the Chalk + Ink podcast. 

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20 Comments

  • Rose Cappelli

    March 18, 2022 at 8:51 AM

    I admire your organization, Marcie! I try to capture thoughts in random notebooks I carry and on my phone, then transfer them to a daily list of snippets – observations or thoughts about something that I noticed. It’s always fun to reread those lists.
    “trickle-blip” – what a great word!

  • Ruth

    March 18, 2022 at 4:53 PM

    Like you, I have several lists. Some of mine are on paper. There’s one on my phone. A couple on my laptop. Sometimes in the middle of the night I grab my phone and send myself an email so I won’t forget whatever thought has just grabbed me!

  • Mary Lee

    March 19, 2022 at 9:55 AM

    Thanks for the peek into your (enviable) organization! Every now and then I look at my shelf of writer’s notebooks and encourage myself (to no avail) to read back through them to mine for ideas and (the luck of it!) whole poems to type up!

  • PATRICIA J FRANZ

    March 19, 2022 at 12:51 PM

    Marcie! So organized!! I have notebooks…oodles of notebooks. With colorful post-it notes as placeholders, so that I MIGHT be able to find a topic, a story, a poem, a note that I recorded. I have files… oodles of word docs and folders, my poor attempt to capture what eventually comes out of those notebooks. It’s an ongoing arm wrestle! I love the image with your haiku in this post. The pond near my house is still frozen. The few mallards that next in warm weather have yet to return. Our Canadian geese must still be vacationing in warmer climes!

  • Linda Mitchell

    March 19, 2022 at 1:43 PM

    ooooooh. Hike and Sketch sounds wonderful. I open up a powerpoint on my computer each month. I add a slide for each new idea. Sometimes is a snip of something or a copy & paste or a saved image. I add the website of where I found the item in the notes section of the slide. At the end of the year in December I go back through the 12 power points and see what still stands as an idea to develop. I often find notes to self to think about for next year and a whole BUNCH of stuff.

  • Linda Baie

    March 19, 2022 at 8:31 PM

    Hi Marcie, I love the way you organize, too. I have so many notebooks, especially those I used with students all the years I taught. I’ve gone through them to try to capture some “snippets” as you shared, but some poems I think I’d like to work on more. They are also field journals that take me back to so many trips, ‘memory lane’. I walk by a lake as you did & yes, the geese are having fun sometimes, unless it’s too much wintry weather back. I like that “trickle-blip”!

  • Laura Purdie Salas

    March 19, 2022 at 11:05 PM

    Love that trickle-blip and the splash of goose wings. Plenty of geese right now returning north and passing through Minnesota :>) Ooh, I have several end-of-month reports that I do, but they’re about my submissions and replies…not about other areas of my writing life. I may have to steal your ideas and add a couple of my own. What I’m trying to do right now is reread my 2021 morning pages, because so many things get entered there that are things I might want to remember or act on. I’ve never re-read my morning pages before, even though I’ve done them for 12-13 years. It takes forever, because I’m highlighting them in different colors for various categories and manuscripts. Ideally, I’d like to reread pages about 4-8 weeks out. So in March, reread January’s pages, etc. I think if I reread them too soon, I won’t have enough perspective. But…I’d like to reread them sooner than, um, never, or even the following year. Thanks for this nudge, Marcie!

  • Sally Murphy

    March 20, 2022 at 3:05 AM

    Like you I have lots of ntoebooks and carry one everywhere. Unfortunately, unlike you, I do not have a system for reviewing what’s in them. I love your process and it isnpires me to try to do soemthing like this myself. Thanks too for your haiku.

  • Laura Shovan

    March 21, 2022 at 5:23 PM

    Hi, Marcie! I’m smiling at “trickle-blip.” Lately, I’ve been trying Juan Filipe Herrera’s Jabberwalking method of notes and doodles. Your journaling reminds me of that.

  • Tabatha

    April 15, 2022 at 7:10 PM

    So fun to read about your notebooks! I love that you keep them everywhere 🙂 Amy LV (The Poem Farm) has a blog where people talk about their notebook process and your post would fit right in.