One Night Stanzas

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to check out my Thanksgiving contest, which asked you the question “what are you thankful for?”. All the answers made great reading, and it was tricky to choose a ‘best’ one from the pack. However, I eventually decided that the winner ought to be Katja, with this list!:

“1. My parents (and dog!). They’ve been there for me through some really, really rough patches and sometimes i cannot understand WHY they would keep on keeping on with me, but they do.

2. Getting accepted into the Uni I’m at, getting to study English filology, which means lots of literature and arts and history and language.

3. Being on the mend.

4. As butt-kissy as it sounds, this blog. I found it literally a few weeks after starting Uni, right when I was going through poetry in my Lit tutorial class, and reading this blog inspired me (still does!) a lot, and made it somehow easier to understand what we were talking about in class.

5. All the great, inspiring people I’ve met online and in real life, who dare to think outside the circle and are creative and unique.

6. Music, without which I would go absolutely insane, be bored to tears, feel more alone than I am, etc.

7. I’m thankful that there is thankfulness in the world, still! It’s like hope.”

And no - I didn’t just pick her because she name-dropped ONS! I picked Katja’s list because it was honest, modest, simple and sweet. I loved the fact that Katja is thankful for simply “being on the mend” - something we could all relate to in some way or another - and Number 7 in the list really clinched it for me. Nicely done, Katja! Get in touch with me to claim your poetic prize!

(I can’t help but mention H’s list, too - it reads like a poem and again is very honest. Rather more bittersweet, but lovely:

“Sadness and wealth.
South African liquor.
Smoking a cigar in my pink bathrobe.
Tyler, who writes poetry and licks the inside of my mouth.
Sadness and wealth.
My mother, who stole 7 thousand dollars from me - I hate you, but thank you for birthing me, I suppose.
My brother, who no longer speaks to me, thank you for getting into the fight with me one time when I hit you with a shovel - these things teach us a lot.
Sadness and wealth.

The first time I held a gun and shot a plastic bottle in the desert.

My husband, who works twelve hour days so I can sit around smoking a cigar in my pink bathrobe and writing.

The turkey we cooked at midnight, drinking apple wine, eating molasses cookies.

The place I lay my head that is sadness and wealth.

And the way a turkey looks like after you take off all of the meat - so naked and strange and wonderful.”)

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving day, whether you celebrate or not! It’s downhill to Christmas now… anyone else excited?

(Photo by Ana Santos)

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Tags: advice for young writers, publishing, resources for young writers, what are you thankful for the winner, young poets

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 8:37 pm and is filed under Participate!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.