Weekly Scribblings #48: “Words of an Unprecedented Year”

Greetings, my dear poets and storytellers. I hope December (and January, too) brings us all sorts of wonders we need and many (wonderful things) we didn’t even know we wanted. We all need… something good to soothe our memories of 2020, don’t you think? So much happened this year, and most of it not great at all. Still, there has been a silver-lining or three: strangers spreading kindness, previously buried social issues coming into the light, and the Word of the Year going from 1 word to more than 40.

All right, so the last item in my listed trio might not truly make the silver-lining category for some of us, since more isn’t always better. But it certainly is different. The Word of the Year is most often just one word, or a phrase, or in the case of 2015 a laughing emoji 😂. Not in 2020. This year produced 47 words (in a 38-page report that can be downloaded HERE).

Today’s prompt was inspired by the “Words of an Unprecedented Year”. On our preview of this prompt, shared on our last Writers’ Pantry, I offered the words Allyship, Blursday, Covidiot, Doomscrolling, and Virtue-signalling, and then invited everyone to write new poetry or prose where the central theme revolves around one or more of the given words. But here is a longer list for you to choose from (all these words appear in this year’s report):  

Allyship, n. active support for the rights of a minority or marginalized group without being a member of it.

Anthropause, n. a global slowdown of travel and other human activities.

Blursday, n. a day of the week that is indistinguishable from any other.

Blended learning, n. a style of education in which students learn via electronic and online media as well as traditional face-to-face teaching.

Cancel culture, n. a culture in which there is a widespread practice of publicly rejecting or withdrawing support from people or things regarded as promoting socially unacceptable views.

Covidiot, n. a person who disobeys guidelines designed to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

Doomscrolling, n. the action of compulsively scrolling through social media or news feeds which relate bad news.

Hygiene theatre, n. cleaning practices which give the illusion of sanitization without reducing the risk of infection.

Infodemic, n. a proliferation of diverse, often unsubstantiated information relating to a crisis, controversy, or event, which disseminates rapidly and uncontrollably through news, online, and social media, and is regarded as intensifying public speculation or anxiety.

Moonshot, n. an extremely ambitious and innovative project.

Virtue-signalling, n. the public expression of opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue.

Wokeness, n. the fact or quality of being alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.

Workation, n. a working vacation; a holiday during which one also works.

Please, choose one or as many of these words as you wish, and write new poetry or prose with a central theme inspired by your choice(s). This prompt will stay open for a week. One link per participant, please. If you choose to write prose, the word count should be 369 words or fewer. Let us create… with words!

Writers’ Pantry #48: Words, Words, Words

Don’t we love them! They are our most basic tools of trade. Perhaps, dear wordsmiths, the most wonderful thing about them is that there are so many different ways we can use them. 

The town of Murwillumbah where I live (in New South Wales, Australia) is home to Poets Out Loud, a series of performance opportunities initiated and managed by poet Sarah Temporal (whom I’ve featured  in our previous incarnation at Poets United). One of its initiatives is the Youth Slam, where Sarah and others coach school-age poets in how to present their work live, culminating in a competition.
 

Because of the pandemic, they’ve been held on video this year. The 2020 winner, 18-year-old Pancho Symes, is a young man who clearly loves to have fun with words elaborate and fantastical. He recites his humorous, almost nonsensical poem, The Confederacy of Ants, as if it were utterly serious – which is part of the charm. It’s full of multi-syllable words, intricate phrases and marvellous rhymes, and it tells a story too.

If you’re on facebook, do find the Poets Out Loud page (at this link) and then find the video introducing Pancho. Or if you’ve an hour to spare, enjoy the whole Youth Slam here at the Poets Out Loud website. I promise you, it’s a joy and a revelation. Or you can find individual entrants on YouTube.

I’m also impressed by the runner-up, 16-year-old Georgia Smith, who presented, with gut-wrenching fervour, a powerful piece on relationship violence. The vivid originality is here also, and the clever rhymes – but these words are direct, strong, and mostly one-syllable. Two terrific poems, so very different, each suiting the words to the theme. And, if you decide to enjoy the whole hour, there’s a variety of other poetic choices in just this one small geographical area and one brief space of time.

This is what I love about our P&SU community, too: always such a rich variety of styles, moods, forms, subject matter … so many different ways, not only of using language but of exploring it to find its utmost expressive possibilities.

I’m primarily a poet so I tend to focus on poetry, but the limitless ways of using words apply as much to prose – from the powerfully spare sentences of Hemingway to the richly complex style of Lawrence Durrell, from the careful details of plot, personality and social observation in Austen to the wide-open Joycean ‘stream of consciousness’.

If there are limits, we – the whole collective of poets and storytellers all over the world, throughout all of human time – haven’t found them yet. We keep on finding ways to 'make it new'.

Exciting, eh?

Feel free to excite us (or soothe, inspire, amaze, arouse, agitate, alarm, delight, surprise, chill or warm, etc.) with your writings – old or new, poetry or prose, in any style, on any topic. If it’s prose, please keep it within 369 words, excluding title. Then share it with the rest of us via Mr Linky, which will stay open for a week. Happy reading, folks! And don’t forget to check back for participants linking towards the end of the week.

Meanwhile, next Wednesday, Magaly will invite us to write new poetry or prose where the central theme revolves around one or more of the following five words: 1. Allyship (n. active support for the rights of a minority or marginalized group without being a member of it), 2. Blursday (n. a day of the week that is indistinguishable from any other), 3. Covidiot (n. a person who disobeys guidelines designed to prevent the spread of Covid-19), 4. Doomscrolling (n. the action of compulsively scrolling through social media or news feeds which relate bad news), 5. Virtue-signalling (n.  the public expression of opinions or sentiments intended to demonstrate one’s good character or the moral correctness of one’s position on a particular issue).