It is 5 december 2025, and I’m finally doing a summary of my monthly challenges for september, october, and november. For each of these months, I didn’t really have a monthly challenge. Instead, I worked on the full manuscript for my book, which was originally titled, Haunts, then Girl Ghost Gorge, then Echo // location, then Echolocate | | Echolocated. Fun!
Instead of a challenge, here are some thoughts/notes/ideas:
- a poem about Lorine Niedecker, and a writing prompt (1 sept)
- memory, Mary Oliver, everyday, and ordinary and extraordinary time (2 sept)
- an exchange of Yous on the Winchell Trail (4 sept)
- locating self/finding a place, a home (7 sept)
- a phrase I’d like to use in a poem, or title a poem, or write a poem about: there or thereabouts (8 sept)
- began working on a rock chant (10 sept)
- imagining shadows, instead of water, falling at shadow falls, which became the focus of my You Are Here: Shadow Falls poem (11 sept)
- a book I’d like to read: Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening/ Ben Ratliff (13 sept)
- brainstorming “You Are Here” poem locations (14 sept)
- a phot: below ford – bridge as window (reflection on river surface) / running rituals, a list (16 sept)
- established syllable counts for chants: rock (1 2 syllable words and 1 1 syllable word), river (3 1 syllable words), air (1 3 syllable word) (22 sept)
- chanting rock echoes while running above the gorge (23 sept)
- an idea for river chant: words across the page, repeated, left blank to make the shape of the river gorge (24 sept) not used
- a new (to me) type of bell: bells inside coffins for people buried alive to alert others (25 sept)
- came up with my riprap idea: 3 poems — rock face (original poem), falling rock (poem made out of only some of the words in the order the words appear), riprap (poem using words in a new order) (28 sept)
- another idea for the collection, not used, or used differently: lists of 10 things (30 sept)