Golden Hinge

Verselove is a community celebration of poetry in April—an invitation to write, read, and reflect together. You’re welcome to write a poem a day or to come and go as you need. Reading and leaving a brief note—a line you loved, an image that stayed, a feeling a poem stirred—is also a meaningful way to participate. This is a generous, low-pressure space. We’re glad you’re here.

Our Host: Angie Braaten

Angie has been teaching English since 2013. She started her teaching career in Louisiana for five years, then moved overseas and taught in Bangladesh and Kuwait. She currently teaches in Mauritius. Her overseas experiences have opened her mind in ways that may have never happened if she had stayed in the states. She has taught grades 6-11 but her favorite would probably be 8th, a grade that will always hold a special place in her heart, being the year she realized she wanted to be an English teacher herself. She is grateful for this community of writers and to have monthly opportunities to write, read, and share poetry. It has influenced who she is as a teacher, and person in general, in many ways.

Inspiration

I know a lot of us here are fans of the Golden Shovel, but have you ever heard of the golden hinge?

In her article ‘On Not Writing, and Letting Wildness Be Your Guide’, Leila Chatti discusses her history with depression and the different ways she wrote poetry during a specific time in her life, one of them being the golden hinge. She says, “Forms born from wildness, like dreams, create a space that is both totally free and totally limited. The disorder was so great that I required greater and greater order. When the brace of the Golden Shovel left too much flexibility for my comfort, I added another, creating the golden hinge: a form in which a borrowed line can be read horizontally as the first line of the poem as well as vertically down the left spine, as the first words of each line.”

Read the whole article here: https://lithub.com/on-not-writing-and-letting-wildness-be-your-guide/

Process

1. Decide what you want to write your poem about.
2. Find a line from a text that you want to base your golden hinge on.
3. Create your poem!

Angie’s Poem

no one dies or is dead in this poem
one day we find out someone
dies because of war or suicide
or just life. he is gone, she
is gone. they all seem to be
dead. outside of this, yes, but
in between the lines of
this life-giving text, this
poem transcends their death.

*no one dies or is dead in this poem taken from “The Rules” by Leila Chatti

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.