Rob Carney is known for his origin story poems, poems of the Northwest, and talking about myths and progress in his essays and poems, which have often been featured on Terrain.org and other publications. Recently, two more of his current-event themed essays and corresponding poems have been published in a couple of great literary magazines, free to read online.

Not only are the essays/poems thought provoking with new entry into ideas we’re all bumbling around with, they are often great prompts for creating your own work, whether pulling from the ideas or mimicking his poetic style in the poems he offers. Keep your eye out for upcoming feature guest blog posts by Rob Carney, with very specific and unique prompts to inspire your next poem, flash fiction, or prose.

PROMPT: Try your hand at a similar story/poem by connecting a current event to an animal and include a myth of some sort. Then share a link to your own blog post or your favorite lines in the comments below.

Below are links to both essays/poems.

Rob Carney – Cetology vs. Anthropology via Live Encounters

This is short essay about a white orca, how “humans get stuck on the colors of things,” and whether or not an orca is a whale or in the dolphin family, along with his poem “Why We Have Whales.”

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Dear World Outside the United States via The Dark Mountain Project

The essay ends with audio of a poem with the same title.

‘Sometimes a hawk will land here, as if this isn’t really a city, as if buildings and plans are just stories that we like to tell ourselves’. Following on from our Outbreak dispatches we bring you two penetrating glimpses into the wild world in times of calamity: Rob Carney’s juxtaposition of the poetic and the political observing a hawk and squirrel in the US; Samantha Clark’s lockdown contemplation of loss and stillness by a loch on a grey day on Orkney.

Rob Carney is the author of seven books of poems, most recently The Last Tiger Is Somewhere (Unsolicited Press 2020), Facts and Figures (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle 2020), and The Book of Sharks (Black Lawrence Press 2018), which was a finalist for the 2019 Washington State Book Award. In 2014 he received the Robinson Jeffers/Tor House Foundation Award for Poetry. His work has appeared in Cave Wall, The American Journal of Poetry, Sugar House Review, and many others. He’s a Professor of English at Utah Valley University and writes a regular feature called “Old Roads, New Stories” for Terrain.org.

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