Laura Smith Writer

Category: Nonfiction

  • What's Eating You?

    “If something is eating you, you got to find a way to use it,” said the art teacher from the movie  Speak. This got me to thinking about just what is eating me (because something is) and how I can use it.  So I have been sending out resumes for the career field I chose since…

  • The Halfway Point: Poem a Day

    On the first day of this month I began the ”poem a day” experiment. After all, it is March, cold, slushy, and dreary. I needed a pick me up, an attitude adjustment per se. So I set out to write one poem per day for the entire month, thirty-one days total. I am now halfway…

  • Group Poetry

    I took a very cool Poetry and Play workshop yesterday, with Lisken Van Pelt Dus, as part of March’s Berkshire Women Writers Festival. The following was an exercise we did in the workshop. This poem consisted of six lines. For each line we would receive  word from the person sitting next to us. We then…

  • Children are not data

         The following is a question I encountered while applying for a teaching position in  Holyoke. Needless to say,  I won’t be called for an interview. I am posting my response. And the lack of punctuation is not my error, but theirs.         Please tell us three pieces of data that you monitor…

  • Blue?

    I need to write today. maybe it is because I bought this purple  pen, or maybe I wish to hear the scratch of ink on paper, the  “swish” of my hand trailing across the page. What would happen if I changed colors halfway through this poem? Would I continue writing? Or would the words seem…

  • The Dreaded "If Only"

    If only I had a real job, if only I was ten pounds lighter, if only it stopped snowing…they strike again, the dreaded  ” if onlies.” If only {insert some life event} happened I would be happy. These two little words reek havoc. After all, is happiness truly contingent on change? Eckhart Tolle wrote, “The…

  • Robbed

    Not much was taken, a few laptops, some medallions…but I now lock my door. I do not trust my home to passersby. I do not leave my door unlocked when I shower. I do not trust today. Yesterday I came home to a disturbance: doors and cabinets all wide open, drawers rifled through, my God box…

  • Running for Meg

    I ran five miles today, nothing out of the ordinary. But today I ran that five miles for Meg, a woman who was struck by a drunk driver on her morning run this past Monday. We runners have all had close calls, we have all jumped out of the way just in time to avoid…