Wren Starling

Our theme this time was "Older Scenes and Forgotten Characters." I wrote from 11 AM to 3 AM, so about 14 hours, allowing for lunch and supper breaks. I wrote 2 poems on Tuesday plus 5 later in the week.

Participation was down slightly, with 8 comments on LiveJournal and another 39 on Dreamwidth. A total of 12 people sent prompts. There were no new prompters.


Read Some Poetry!
The following poems from the May 5, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl have been posted:
"How Great You Really Are"
"Restoring Them to Their Former Glory"
"Where There Is No Respect for Life"
"The Worst Thing in Life"


Buy some poetry!
If you plan to sponsor some poetry but haven't made up your mind yet, see the unsold poetry list from May 5. That includes the title, length, price, and the original thumbnail description for the poems still available.

This month's donors include: janetmiles and gs_silva . All sponsored poems from this fishbowl have been posted. There are 2 tallies toward a bonus fishbowl.


The Poetry Fishbowl has a landing page.

Stunning Mosaics Made by Londoners with PTSD Offer Pieces of Healing in Community Artwork

Tucked away in the parks and alleyways of East London lies one of the city’s most vibrant collections of public art.

What makes it all the more special is the mending of mental health maladies that transforms its volunteer artists.

The sometimes sprawling, Roman-inspired masterpieces are the work of the Hackney Mosaic Project and its founder Tessa Hunkin.


I suspect that the fitting of tiles into a mosaic offers similar benefits as stacking-sorting games like Tetris. Since PTSD is fundamentally a "stuck" problem, processes that focus on organizing things can jostle the brain into sorting memories into the "past" category.

Today's theme is Music.

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Today is partly sunny, humid, and hot.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 5/28/26 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I've seen a male cardinal at the hopper feeder.

EDIT 5/28/26 -- I did more work around the patio.

Xenofiction tells a story from the perspective of a nonhuman character.  Some have humans only in the background; others have none at all.  Alien-only science fiction is a small branch of that genre, but animal fiction is a very large branch of children's and young adult literature.

Today we went up to Danville.

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This is an advance announcement for the Tuesday, June 2, 2026 Poetry Fishbowl. This time the theme will be "Fun with Language." I'll be soliciting ideas for linguists, translators, interpreters, historians, diplomats, refugees, explorers, partners, teachers, clergy, leaders, superheroes, supervillains, alien or fantasy species, failure analysts, ethicists, activists, rebels, other people who get into interesting linguistic situations, translating, interpreting, reading, researching, revising theories, conversing, traveling, inventing languages, parenting, teaching, adventuring, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, bartering, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, asking for help and getting it, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, expecting the unexpected, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, libraries, laboratories, meeting rooms, ruins, liminal zones, trading posts, port cities, schools, churches, supervillain lairs, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, farmer's markets, starships, alien planets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other places where languages mix, alphabets, pictograms and other symbols, lost languages, ancient tomes, mysterious texts, misnomers and mistranslations, recordings, the record that breaks the record player, puzzling discoveries, sudden surprises, the buck stops here, trial and error, intercultural entanglements, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

The Bear Tunnels features numerous tribal languages.

Clay of Life is Jewish fantasy with occasional bits of Hebrew or Yiddish.

The Daughters of the Apocalypse spans a variety of languages, including a split before Before and After English.

Eloquent Souls presents a setting where soulmarks are common, but they don't always appear in the same language.

Fiorenza the Wisewoman is Italian fantasy with bits of Italian.

Frankenstein's Family features two scientists running a valley in historic Romania, with languages including Dacian, English, French, Hungarian, Romanian, and Latin.

Hart's Farm is a free love community with a few really exotic characters, set in Sweden with occasional tidbits from other languages.

Not Quite Kansas includes demonic and angelic writing.

Peculiar Obligations features a mix of Quakers, pirates, and other people speaking diverse languages.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society.  It spans a wide range of languages including Arabic, Dhivehi, English, Esperanto, French, and several tribal ones.

Or you can ask for something new.

Linkbacks reveal a verse of any open linkback poem.

If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week. (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts. I am now.) Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )