In Amsterdam last week, I was visiting an exhibition about impressionism, featuring paintings by Monet, Renoir and Pissarro.

The Impressionists as they were called mockingly first, wanted to capture moments, the play of shade and light with few and quick brush strokes. Just recently enabled by the invention of paint in tubes, they painted in the open air and tried to capture the atmosphere of what they saw.

They had to paint quickly and couldn’t afford to spend too much time on details cause the light changes rapidly and those windows, they wanted to capture were open for just a short time span.

But details weren’t their focus anyway, it was the mood of a moment, a feeling, fleeting, moving. Monet once said “For me a landscape does not exist in itself, it changes every moment in appearance, but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life.”

For today, let’s get into their footsteps and write poetry in an impressionistic style

• Do this by using quick and loose “brush strokes”
• Write about common, ordinary subject matter, maybe from an unusal angle
• Bring the poem to life by capturing the play of shade and light of how it falls the moment we see it
• Write quickly, don’t spend too much time on details but try to capture the mood and the atmosphere
• Add only those details that you think are important to underline the mood of your poem
• It’s not perfect…? It doesn’t matter..
• Immediacy of a moment’s window and random choice of the part you show us are the characteristics we’re looking for

Here’s how it works…

• Write your poem
• Post it on your blog
• Click the Mr. Linky button below, and in the new window that opens up input your name and direct url of the poem
• Have fun and visit others who have taken the challenge
• Share via your favourite social media platforms