How did I begin? I’ll tell you. Picture
me, eight years old, sailor girl,
trying to traverse the seas by a boat made of books. I kept
travelogues in my head, piling them on top of each other until
upon completion, they made Ionic columns feel ashamed of
their own shortness. Now move forward and do it
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Monthly Archives: June 2010
WWP Prompt #8 / POW Prompt #9: i still dream of shadows
Liberty, by Nicole Nicholson
i still dream of shadows
gray guards, corded necks, black walking
the stars die in their hair
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Big Tent Poem / WWP Poem #7: Sixteen
This poem was written for both this past Monday’s Big Tent Poetry Prompt and last week’s We Write Poems Prompt. Two ThreeFour visual versions of the poem, plus the original text of the poem, appear below. Click on each graphic to view it large (you might be able to even go larger, depending on your browser).
Visual Poem, Version 1 (Click to View)
Visual Poem, Version 2 (Click to View)
Visual Poem, Version 3
Visual Poem, Version 4
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When the stars bleed through pinholes
like a heroin serenade walking up the tracks
of an earthquake arm where veins are fault lines
and bruises are epicenters where footfalls land;
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Big Tent Poem: An Open Letter to A Suicide Bomber
This poem was written for Big Tent Poetry’s Monday Wordle Prompt this past week. I decided to do something a little different this time around. I erased a couple of words from the original Wordle graphic and managed to use the rest in a poem…written directly onto the graphic.
I wrote this, inspired by Neil Reid’s poem, “The invisible human like a bomb”. You must go read this poem, which had a huge impact on me. It moved me to speak to her.
Click on the graphic below to enlarge and read. Feel free to print this, view it in another window, etc. Some of the verses are placed vertically because the original word I used in some cases is vertical in the original graphic.
Enjoy.
-Nicole
Written 6/18/10
© Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
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Shaun Barber Features Sci-Fi Poetry at First Draft, Friday June 18, 2010
From Joanna Schroeder, host of Writer’s Block First Draft:
“This Friday, don’t miss Shaun Barber’s Sci-fi Feature at First Draft!
Shaun Barber is a talented poet, and one of the most unique voices in town. Don’t miss his set of all new work, including the debut of some new dual voiced sci-fi poems with sound effects!
The traditional First Draft Open mic will follow Shaun’s feature. New poems and new poets always welcome – poems with a sci-fi or geek theme will get extra applause!
The most fun $3 can buy! See you there!
First Draft Open Mic
Kafe Kerouac
2250 N High St, Columbus, OH
Friday, June 18
8pm”
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Stumble It!
WWP Poem #6: Bears
Rouse the fallen trees around you.
Remember how death splinters your jaw.
Slide out tiny javelins from between your teeth and
hurl them at the girl passing by.
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June 2010 Edition of Poetry Super Highway Worldwide Open Reading Online Now!
The June 2010 Edition of Poetry Super Highway Worldwide Open Reading is online now! The broadcast included poets from Vancouver, BC, Canada, Sonoma, CA, Lake Wells, FL, Newark, NJ, Los Angeles, CA, Valley Center, OH, and Columbus, OH — me, reading an unpublished poem entitled “Gulf Song”.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/psh/2010/06/13/june-2010–worldwide-open-reading.
The next show is scheduled for Sunday, June 18, 2010 @ 2:00 PM Pacific/5:00 PM Eastern. During this show, Rick Lupert will be talking about the upcoming Poetry Super Highway Poetry Contest and will be interviewing the judges for this year’s contest. For more information, see the PSH Live website.
Poets for Living Waters – Announcement (via We Write Poems)
Here is another new online publication accepting work about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, probably one of the worst environmental disasters ever, if not of our modern era.
via We Write Poems
the black flood (online publication) (via We Write Poems)
Here is one of a couple of new online publications accepting work about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, probably one of the worst environmental disasters ever, if not of our modern era. I will be announcing another site in the next post.
via We Write Poems
“Houdini” Featured in Today’s Thinkering Comic
Hey folks!
One of my poems, “Houdini”, was the subject of today’s episode of Thinkering, a daily comic strip authored by Reudor Gratch. So, go check it out!
Oh yeah, and take a look at the other ones on his site, too. Very witty and well done. 
-Nicole
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Stumble It!
WWP Poem #5: The Day Before (or, Adam Ponders Before the Elohim)
Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise by Marc Chagall
Created June 3, 2010 by Nicole Nicholson. Original text used: “Pointed Roofs” by Dorothy Miller Richardson.
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This poem was created (I don’t say written, and you’ll find out why in a minute) for We Write Poems Prompt #5: Erasures, which comes to us courtesy of Angie Werren.
She directed us to go to the Erasures website over at Wave Books, take the same source text — “Pointed Roofs” by Dorothy Miller Richardson — and erase words at random: as many, or as few, as we liked.
I ended up erasing a good percentage of the words, and this is originally what I had after I was done. And I cheated a little: I added a pronoun, a conjunction, and a preposition to make the text make a bit more sense. Then, I played with spacing and line breaks.
It was a great deal of fun breaking out of my normal style and creation methods…just fun to play around and let a story emerge from the words. I hope you enjoyed this piece.
-Nicole
P.S. Totally unrelated, but my “Houdini” poem was featured in Thinkering, an online comic strip. Go here to check it out: http://reudor.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/escape-artist/
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Stumble It!
WWP Poem #4: Iscariot
I lean upon this door and feel the fabric of the wood –
splinter-down, cragged skin, brown crooked canyon marvel –
against my fingers and cheek. Try to
press my shoulder into it, make it ache
like stones in a path pressing their backs into the
bottoms of your feet, like the
weight of a wooden cross upon a ripped-apart back,
a shoulder scribbled upon in red, skin inscribed
by a whip. Try to press the door into
the valley next to my neck, and listen for the moan
of my bowed collarbone: but nothing works. I cannot
carry stars across my shoulders like you do – not in
this courtyard, where you handed me the knife
and told me to dig in.
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