Last weekend was busy. On Saturday, March 22, I read my work with other local poets at the Saratoga Blossom Festival.  It was early in the morning, there was no parking, and I was tired from a week of teaching and hay fever. On Sunday, March 23, I was in Sacramento at the California Poetry Out Loud (POL) competitions. It was a great great event, and exhausting. Needless to say, I didn’t get prompt #24 past this point : the title of this post “Prompt #24 Spring for Better or Worse.”

I’m not going backwards now, as this weekend is the time for Prompt #25, but I do want to let you in on my thought processes surrounding the “better or worse” title. While preparing the poems for Saturday’s reading, to be spring- or blossom-themed, I realized that a lot of my spring poems are pretty depressing. Part of being a poet is dealing with the sad and crummy emotions as well as the happy and glorious ones. The prompt, which I got as far as the title here and a shout-out on Facebook, was going to be to write about Spring from a non-traditional emotional place. Gloomy, reluctant, cranky, desperate, furious.

Anyway — in case you were watching, now you know. Stay tuned for reviews and photos of last weekend’s events and this weekend’s prompt.

I’m not sure why I feel compelled to keep the record straight, but there you have it.