Every Day Ideas: Every Day Sketches

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Every Day Sketches woman sketching on notebook
I am not an all-day writer. In fact, the greater part of my day is spent in the midst of insurance claims, which can mean, like it did this week, standing on a highway on a foggy morning measuring skid marks leading up to the highway patrol’s pink fluorescent markings on the pavement where a crash took place. Sometimes it means staring at spreadsheets, or poring over medical records, or combing through photos of houses that got very, very hot or very, very wet, or sometimes very, very both.

When I transition from my claims desk to my writing desk (as much a physical as metaphorical shift), sometimes it takes a while for my mind to catch up. Ted Kooser writes in The Poetry Home Repair Manual that he reads poetry every day, and especially before he writes: “I make a practice of reading poetry before I sit down to write. It helps me get my mind tilted in the right direction.”

Lately, in order to make my own mind tilt in that direction, I’ve been using those few minutes of transition to not just read a poem, but also to sketch one. Combining the ideas of #dipintopoetry (a sharing of a favorite line from Every Day Poems on Twitter) and First Line Poem Starters, I use a line from the day’s Every Day Poems selection as a sketch prompt, sometimes posting the sketches on Twitter with the hashtag #everydaysketches.

A few other folks have joined in the #everydaysketches fun, and today we’re featuring some of those sketches below.

Want to join in? When you share your sketches from one of your Every Day Poems lines, we’ll save them for possible inclusion in a special Every Day Ideas e-book in 2016. The e-book will also include other Every Day Ideas, such as Poem Pinups and First Line Poem Starters.

Just like we did with last year’s Casual e-book, our supporters will receive a copy for free when it releases (Want to be one of them? Sign up on our Supporters Page.) and we’ll release it to everyone else during National Poetry Month 2017.

So, if you like…

1. Choose a line from one of the Every Day Poems you received in your inbox (or check the #dipintopoetry stream on Twitter and choose a favorite line from one of our readers)

2. Use the line to inspire a sketch

3. Include a credit for the original poem you borrowed the line from

4. Send us a link to where you post your sketch online (anywhere is fine: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+). Just drop the link in an Every Day Ideas comment box so we can find it.

5. If posting your entry for inclusion in our Every Day Ideas e-book, please do so by April 30, 2016.

And, happy sketching.

Featured photo by Jonathan Petit, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Featured #EveryDaySketches used with permission of the artists.

Want to potentially be in our Every Day Ideas e-book?

Subscribe to Every Day Poems now and become eligible for inclusion in our e-book by either sketching the poems, writing a new poem, or pinning up a poem (and photographing the pinup). We’ll release the e-book free to supporters in late spring 2016 and to the general public during National Poetry Month 2017.

Subscribe to Every Day Poems Now

Last Year’s E-book Project (We Published You!)

Last year we published some of your poems and photographs in an anthology called Casual: A Little Book of Jeans Poems and Photos, that we’ll release soon to the general public.

Here’s what some of our supporters, who received the book last year upon publishing, are saying about Casual:

I’m over the moon about being included. This is beautiful. —Sandra Heska King

Wow! The book is beautiful! —Amy Billone

What a beautiful final product. Grateful to be included. Thank you for investing in us. —Elizabeth Marshall

Casual Cover

Will Willingham
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About Will Willingham

I used to be a claims adjuster, helping people and insurance companies make sense of loss. Now, I train other folks with ladders and tape measures to go and do likewise. Sometimes, when I’m not scaling small buildings or crunching numbers with my bare hands, I read Keats upside down. My first novel, Adjustments, is available now.

Comments

  3. Matthew Kreider says

    Delighted to see this exercise featured today. 🙂

    I really ought to make a list of all the ways my Every Day Poems subscription has been so life-giving to me. Sticking my feet into the water of a new poem each morning — and fishing for attention, line by line — has made such a difference. Poetry for life, it is.

    Quite amazing how committing to that small DipIntoPoetry discipline each day packs a big punch. Hope others try it.

    And thanks so much for featuring some of my sketches here today. 🙂

    Reply

    • Will Willingham says

      Matthew, adding your sketches to what was for me just a personal exercise really helped this thing take off into a true community experience, I think. And I agree, there are so many different ways that daily poetry practice can benefit a person.

      Poetry for life, indeed. 🙂

      Reply

      • Matthew Kreider says

        That community experience makes a big difference, I think. I’m captivated with seeing how folks choose to express the same lines I’m reading.

        The sketches make the poems richer for everyone. 🙂

        Reply

    • Matthew Kreider says

      Quite simply…

      I think it’s pretty exciting stuff. 🙂

      (And I feel a sense of gratitude for the many ways poetry can take shape. Every day.)

      Reply

  5. Laura Brown says

    Thanks so much for encouraging and sharing these.

    It’s like working out a little puzzle every day. It takes about the same amount of time as solving a sudoku, but it’s more satisfying.

    Reply

    • Matthew Kreider says

      Like working out a puzzle? That’s exactly it. And I agree: so much more satisfying. 🙂

      Great description, Laura.

      And I love how the challenge invites me deeper into the poems, deeper into a creative space — even for just a few minutes. 🙂

      Reply

  6. Rick Maxson says

    These are all so remarkable for their perception and inspiration. Makes me wish I could draw. It is impossible to even say which are my favorites. They all are.

    Reply

    • Will Willingham says

      You know, Rick, many days I don’t find that the sketches are something I want to post. And even when I do, I let the camera angle hide the drawing’s quality (erm, I mean, lack thereof). But I find the simple practice itself is so useful to me – for shifting mental gears, and for embodying the image of the poem in a certain way.

      Reply

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