This is the Open Write, a place for educators to nurture their writing lives and to advocate for writing poetry in community. We gather every month and daily in April — no sign-ups, no fees, no commitments. Come and go as you please. All that we ask is that if you write, you respond to others to mirror to them your readerly experiences — beautiful lines, phrases that resonate, ideas stirred. Enjoy. (Learn more here.)
Our Host
Denise Krebs taught elementary grades, junior high, and college undergrads before retiring in 2021. She lives with her husband near Joshua Tree National Park and loves to spend time in the desert hiking and biking. She enjoys traveling to Minneapolis and Seattle to visit her grandchildren and their parents. She just began her third year of writing a poem a day while participating in The Stafford Challenge. She blogs regularly at Dare to Care.
Inspiration
A collective noun is a collection of individuals that are regarded as one unit, like a bouquet of flowers and a herd of cows. Here are some collective nouns I just made up:
- a fascination of flowers
- a beauty of bluebells
- a bedlam of cows
Easy! I found inspiration for my prompt in a post Molly Hogan wrote last spring about having fun with collective nouns. She discovered some beautiful collective nouns and made up some of her own. She tells us about it here:
“Just now I googled a group of butterflies. It can be called a swarm, or ….are you ready? …a kaleidoscope! Ah-mazing! I love that so much!
“It’s 100% fun to make up your own collective nouns though, and I highly recommend it. I will warn you though–it’s addictive! How about a gift of bluebirds? A cacophony of students? Or a plague of houseguests? Oh! Maybe a hemorrhoid of houseguests? lol See what I mean!? Collective nouns can also express some deep and darker emotions. How about these: a complicity of judges? a cesspool of Senators? a hypocrisy of evangelists? an abdication of Republicans?”
(Read more of Molly’s blog post, “Fun with Collective Nouns” at her Nix the Comfort Zone blog.)
Molly then wrote a vibrancy of verses, or small sweet poems, using collective nouns:
from drab winter debris
a chorus of crocuses
rises and sings
©Molly Hogan
a dizziness of daisies
spins across the field
the day tilts to joy
©Molly Hogan
a pride of dandelions
runs rampant across the lawn
seeding future wishes
©Molly Hogan
Process
First, explore some of the collective nouns that are already part of the English language. Here’s one source: https://loveenglish.org/collective-nouns-list/
Next, make up your own collective nouns. You can do a search for abstract and concrete nouns for more inspiration. Form them like this: A(n) “noun” of “nouns”.
Here are some sources for interesting nouns:
Abstract Nouns – https://englishstudyonline.org/abstract-nouns/
Concrete Nouns – https://aceenglishgrammar.com/a-to-z-concrete-nouns/
When you find/make a collective noun you like, save it for your poem. Then create with them.
Here are some ideas:
- Write a small poem using a collective noun, or a series of poems, like Molly did. Here are a few small poetry forms you might explore: elfchen, shadorma, kouta, gogyohka (Shoutout to Margaret Simon, where I learned of all these forms.)
- Use a collective noun as the title and inspiration for a free verse poem.
- Write a list poem full of collective nouns, like I did. What title will hold your collective nouns together?
- Or, as always, write whatever you need to write today!
Denise’s Poem
What Poems Carry
A weaving of words
A wealth of meanings
A burst of devices
A galaxy of wonders
A wandering of sorrows
A healing of hardships
A renewal of dreams
A hope of promises
A promise of hopes
Your Turn
Now, scroll to the comment section below to write your own poem. (This is a public space, so you may choose to use only your first name or initials depending on your privacy preferences.) Not ready? That’s okay. Read the poems already posted for more inspiration. Ponder your own throughout the day. Return later. And, if the prompt does not work for you, that is fine. All writing is welcome. Just write something. Oh, and a note about drafting: Since we are writing in short bursts, we all understand (and even welcome) the typos and partial poems that remind us we are human and that writing is always becoming. If you’d like to invite other teachers to write with us, tell them to subscribe. Also, please be sure to respond to at least three writers.