For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.
I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?
For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above.
This (final!) month's prompts are train, trophy, typewriter, umbrella, Vietnam, war, washing machine, widow, window.
WAR
For whatever reasons, I love reading about war. It's the EMOTIONS of war that get me... when the stakes are so high, the world so chaotic, it seems to put a person right into the heart of who they are and what's important to them.
My next middle grade novel (coming 2021) is set during a war. And here is a nonet (the first nonet I ever wrote!) about war, originally published 2012 here at Live Your Poem:
Al Tafar, Iraq, 2004
By winter the war feasted on fear:
It chewed through dusty, low-slung hills,
gobbled apricot orchards,
rubbed its ribs against scrub.
Eyes, red and searing,
it was patient,
not picky;
wanted
more.
-Irene Latham
Here is a post about one of my favorite LBH poetry anthologies for children -- also about war. Also, one of my 2020 releases THE CAT MAN OF ALEPPO is set in Aleppo during the Syrian civil war... and I don't think I'm done yet writing about war. We'll see what happens next!
"feasted on fear" is true, but it seems that to keep going, one must get beyond it and do good. I read about war, too, especially about those who step up with courage. I've read about that Cat Man, know your book will be wonderful, Irene.
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