Adapting to a New Homeland
Honoring the resilience and creativity of ancestors in new lands.
Immigrating is not just about arrival. It’s also about adaptation. Newly planted immigrants, even if they’re meeting family and friends in a new land, need to learn new customs, possibly a new language, find work, and build community. All of this effort requires resilience and creativity. This week, I look at how you might write a free verse form of poetry to capture what your ancestor might have experienced upon arriving in their new world.
🖋️Poetry Form Spotlight: Free Verse Prose Poem
A prose poem in free verse allows storytelling without strict line breaks while retaining poetic devices.
“48 of the Best Free Verse Poems From Contemporary Poets” from BookRiot - A great way to learn more about this poetry form and to understand that any length or shape to the poem works as long as you utilize punctuation, line breaks, and vocabulary with flair.
“Prose and poetry techniques: Free verse”, from Victoria and Albert Museum.
“How to Write a Free Verse Poem: Writing Poetry Without Fixed Form” from Writers.com.
✍️Mini-Prompt
Write a prose poem about a day in your ancestor’s life after arriving in their new home. Include sensory details and small victories. You don’t have to include every detail about their arrival, such as the name of the ship or train, the port of entry, or their fears. Instead, write using the five senses: What did they see, smell, taste, hear, or touch that connects them to this new land in a way they didn’t connect in their homeland?
💬 Call to action
Share the poem with your genealogy circle or online family group. I’m anxious for someone to share their poems here! Bring it on!
Learn about some reading resources and tap into a checklist that you can use before you write your poem at Goin’ Poetic’s article for this week.
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