I enjoy word-based art, too, and make some, usually short poems. I host a social media collaborative thing on Facebook as FB Improv Poems.” Please drop by to read poems made in a single sitting and join it if you want another outlet for your word-based muse. I have a few stories on this site, too.

In February (2015) I made a spreadsheet to roll word dice for some fun or seriously good writing prompts. It gives little provocative phrases based on the day or your name or birthday. The spreadsheet is in Excel 2013 and uses nothing hidden or macros.

DOWNLOAD: Writer’s Blocks by Celia Landman

Here’s an example of my use the Landman dice (pictured here) that my spreadsheet plays with:

This winter (2015, a hard one in northeast US), I looked out my window for a writing subject and thought of one of the oak trees out there in the snow. I rolled the dice and got faith (one of the 48 inspirational words on the eight metal, hand-made dice by Celia Landman). That word inspired a thought about the inner strength and life of a tree, specifically the cambium layer under the bark. I then wrote a poem.

How We Can Stand It

When I am wavering bent
from the wind dimmed in fog covered in snow
I look at the oak at the edge of the field
how it stands
without clothing there in the winter
and I think of what I cannot see
that hibernating green
skin as thin as my wrist skin
but its bark armor rugged and thick as a wolf growl
I think of that cambium layer held
firm by a century of corewood
pithwood heartwood sapwood
a trickling stream sourced a hundred feet
below the frost
flowing to the sky against all gravity
not fueled by anything we can see
but fueled by what the botanists found because
they had to know
as we all do
how this can ever happen
how a tree
how any of us
can stand it
stand without clothing in the winter
how we can ever warm our branching arms
blood syrup pulsing out and out and up into each of our fingers
scratching at the sun