Dry as a…

Summary

Timothy Key, a former firefighter/paramedic, has embraced poetry through a writing challenge, expanding his repertoire beyond prose to include haiku, and shares his creations on the theme of "dry," while also acknowledging the influence of other writers and inviting further participation.

Abstract

The website content reflects Timothy Key's recent foray into poetry, specifically the haiku genre, as part of a 31-day writing challenge. Despite initial reservations about writing poetry, Key has found the experience of crafting haikus to be a positive expansion of his writing capabilities. His haikus are inspired by a prompt on the theme of "dry," for which he was tagged by Geetika Sethi, originating from Brett Christensen. Key presents two of his haiku compositions and tags several individuals, encouraging them to engage with his responses. He also promotes his other recent writings and invites readers to connect with him on various social media platforms and his mailing list.

Opinions

Timothy Key expresses a positive attitude towards expanding his writing skills to include poetry, indicating personal growth and adaptability.
He appreciates the minimalistic nature of haikus, recognizing the challenge and beauty in conveying scenes or feelings

My Haiku, for you

First off, I suspect it is time to stop saying that I don’t do poetry. I knew going into this month of 31 writing challenge responses in as many days, that I was likely to be pulled into some verse.

I like the idea that I am expanding my horizons and capabilities a little. And, so far at least, no one has begged me to stop, which I take as a reasonably encouraging sign!

Today I jumped into a new poem genre, the Haiku. Allegedly, or at least according to the minimal research I did on how to write a haiku, if you don’t hail from Japan, there aren’t a lot of rules.

Seems that those of us that aren’t native Japanese have been granted a license (yep, a poetic one). That said, I think there is a certain spirit to the haiku, irrespective of locale, that ask us to describe a scene or feeling with a minimum of words. So, I tried to do that.

My prompt came from being tagged by Geetika Sethi in a prompt originating with Brett Christensen. It is to write a Haiku or Tanka with the topic “Dry”:

Here are my offerings:

Waves crash into beach

Youngsters build castles and splash

Towels wave, dried by wind

And:

Dry skin, weathered hand

Wrapped in grandma’s love, safe

Perspective is key

I am going to tag a few of the people that Geetika Sethi also tagged, so hopefully they will include me in their responses.

If you like this, you might like some of my other recent writing, including my July daily roundup of writing challenges:

And a recent poetic response to a prior challenge:

And another more spontaneous poem:

Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.

Illumination Writing Challenge

Dry as a…

My Haiku, for you

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Left High and Dry

Dusty Dry

18th July 2020 Haiku/Tanka prompt “dry ”.

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Summer

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Medium Story Editor Format Blues

Nothing left to do but write a poem