#WriteOut 2019: I Am From...

Free Write Prompt

WriteOut, a National Writing Project challenge, is all about place-based learning and connecting.  Getting out of doors and interacting with the national parks, rediscovering your own places again, and writing about all of it.   In company with the crowdsourced project at WriteOut -- Tell me about where you are from: the place, objects, ancestors and their traits, traditions, challenges, fun times, food. Draw on all five senses. Ready? Go.

Poem Prompt

Write at least 3 stanzas of an “I Am From” poem.  Use you most vivid lines, avoid cliches, try to employ as many of the categories suggested in the free write.  Repeatedly use the phrase “I Am From”

Our "Crowdsourced" Poem

In real time, our international group of writers contributed individual lines in a chat-post section.  In lines entered only split seconds apart, the collaborative poem began to take shape,  showing qualities of  landscapes and places and people that have defined each of us -- and showing the common threads that bind us.  To preserve the  perfect,  real-time randomness of the collaboration, minimal editing was done.

Example Poem

Something Extra

 A few months ago, on National Public Radio, writer/poet Kwami Alexander and radio host Rachel Martin crowdsourced a version of 'Where I'm From' from listeners, asking them to send in their poems or lines of their memories of home. Alexander then remixed the submissions, and they read the collaborative poem on air.

PoetryBones invites you to add your lines in the comment section!