Practine one: Warm up

Write about a time where you tripped over something laying on the ground.

Now add some drama to the story - did you fall into an angry moose, was the nail rusty and cause your foot to fall off, did you grow wings before you hit the ground? :) How wild can you go?

Practice two: expanding

There is a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver called ‘Watering the Stones’

“Every summer I gather a few stones from
the beach and keep them in a glass bowl.
Now and again I cover them with water,
and they drink. There’s no question about
this; I put tinfoil over the bowl, tightly,
yet the water disappears. This doesn’t
mean we ever have a conversation, or that
they have the kind of feelings we do, yet
it might mean something. Whatever the
stones are, they don’t lie in the water
and do nothing”.

To continue the thread of Mary Oliver’s poem, what might this mean?

If you put a stone close to your ear, what do you hear? Maybe beyond the ordinary of it being something we think we already know. What images form in your mind about what it is.

What point of view does this solid being have in the world? What does it know? What would it say if it could speak to you?

Share your writing

Let us read your responses. Use the #gatheringsingingstones on instagram so we can find you.

Feel free to tag me as well - I’d love to follow your work.

Inspiration & a last ‘task’.

I would like to invite you to record yourself reading a bit of your own reading you really like. Play it back and/or play it for someone else.

What comes up for you?

Listening to a poem from the poet, is always special. The Summer Day is another favorite.

Thank you so much for joining this 5 day exploration <3

If you want to go deeper into earth based writing

and exploration through words

check out the series

‘Between Body & Soil’

I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed spending this time with words and your imagination.

Gathering singing stones