Tag: creativewriting

An Ode to your Code—How to write a ZipOde 

Published on by Beatriz F.Leave a comment
33185 Murky waters stir Toothy snout surfaces crocodile These are very rare, our Everglades guide exclaims Mostly we get gators here Beatriz Fernandez ZipOde 33185

The ZipOde, aka Zip Ode, is a fun, five-line poetry form invented by the O,Miami Poetry Festival in collaboration with WLRN Public Radio and Television.

The ZipOde celebrates the local life, the daily struggle, the beauty and ugliness, the minor and major frustrations and joys of living in a specific place.

Zip Odes – O, Miami

Here is how you can write an ode to your own zip code!

  • Write the numbers of your zip code on five separate lines.
  • Each number will determine how many words that line will have.
  • (Similar to haikus but substitute words for syllables.)
  • If you have a zero in your zip code, then you can either leave it blank, insert an emoji or image or consider it a wildcard line of 1-9 words!

WLRN celebrated the 10th anniversary of the invention of the ZipOde in 2025 and as it turns out, I was the very first person to submit a ZipOde in O, Miami’s first call for submissions back in 2015.  Always on the lookout for inspiration in unexpected places, I liked the idea of writing a place-centered short poem that celebrated my neighborhood.

You can read some stories about the 10th anniversary celebration and read some ZipOdes here.

ZipOdes | WLRN

O, Miami has produced a colorful, beautifully illustrated 10th anniversary commemorative book as well:

You can see some sample pages here:

Literally Everyone's Invited ZipOdes Book – OMiami

Cover of the book Literally everyone's invited: an Ode to South Florida 2015 to 2024. O, Miami. Poems and photos by over 450 South Floridians. Edited by Gesi Schilling and Sarah Trudgeon.

ZipOdes everywhere!

Although the ZipOde form originated in South Florida, it has been celebrated in several other cities; O, Miami and WLRN offer it as a resource to anyone who wants to try it, as long as they attribute its creation to the O, Miami Poetry Festival and WLRN.

Tips for writing a ZipOde:

  • Use impactful words
  • Work those contractions!
  • Limit your scope but remain expansive
  • Anchor it geographically

If you have a 1 in your Zip Code (as I do), use it to maximum effect by making it a memorable, impactful word. Don’t waste the limited real estate in a ZipOde by using it for a connecting word like “and,” not that there haven’t been some excellent ZipOdes that do just that!

When you’re dealing with a limited word count—make contractions your friend!  Why say “we have” when “we’ve” will work? 

My favorite ZipOdes by other writers are the funny, pithy ones, but for my own, my preference is to look around me and celebrate the beauty and mystery of the nature that surrounds us—the trees, the birds, the animals, the wide-open skies. 

ZipOde Examples

33185

Panthers’ eyes gleam
deep in the
Everglades
blinking under that kite of stars, the Pleiades.
What they’ve seen, we’ve forgotten.


33185

Hidden between hurricanes,
this city’s soul
quivers
like the flight of the Miami blue butterfly
killed by the slightest frost

It’s best to focus on one image, given the brevity of the poem, but the form lends itself to much experimentation and infinite variety.

I like to try to add a word that anchors the ZipOde to a place, since that is the whole point of the form!  Images work, but also consider evocative scents, tastes, colors. 

If you read some examples online, you will see that other poets celebrate their families, homes, neighborhoods in every way possible.  The unique qualities of South Florida life are highlighted in trenchant, wryly fond-toned odes.

ZipOdes as Memoir

You can have fun commemorating all the different places you have lived and worked by writing ZipOdes!  My workplace has two 9s in its zip code—riches!  But even if yours has 1s and 0s, consider it a challenge—similar to when composing a haiku—to express yourself so succinctly.

33199

Driving to campus,
coffee in cupholder
steaming,
the morning sun Stonehenged between skyscrapers in the east–
in my rearview mirror, a flock of ibises rises..

ZipOdes can be dedicated love notes to your birthplace (or your child’s) or your favorite vacation spot or the place you met your significant other. As a collection, they can tell the story of your life—in code!

Thank you for reading and please follow us here and on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OLDSCRATCHPRESS/

Beatriz F. Fernandez is a Miami area poet and University Reference librarian. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, the most recent of which is Simultaneous States  (2025) by Bainbridge Island Press.  In 2025, she became a member of Old Scratch Press.

(ZipOde photo provided to the poet by WLRN.org. Numbers photo credit to Tara Winstead.)

Unlocking Your Writing Through Movement

Published on by Ellis Elliott2 Comments

In high school I watched the clock in last period, because I knew as soon as the bell rang I was heading straight to dance class, and all the teen angst and hormonal folderal of the day would be disappear once I got there.

I’ve taught dance for over forty years now, and that was the beginning of a lifetime of learning how the mind/body connection affects my creativity and well-being.

We’re taught early on that writing is supposed to come from the neck up—brain first, fingers second. We believe the words live in our head. But I’ve come to understand this: the stories I care about—the ones that ache and sing—live in my body. And if I want to write them honestly, I have to move.

Movement Makes Space for Story

When I’m stuck on a line in a poem or in a scene, walking often is my default means to address it. It might just be a walk around the block that allows my shoulders to drop and my breath to even out.

There’s something about the gentle rhythm of walking—or swaying, or stretching—that stirs the sediment at the bottom of the creative well. It shakes loose a phrase, a memory, an emotion I hadn’t thought to name.

We say “I’m working it out,” and often we mean emotionally—but there’s a physical truth there, too.

“ But I do believe very strongly that the best poetry is rooted in bodily experience. We experience reality through our bodies and senses, and truth, to the extent that it is apprehensible.”      -Poet Rebecca Foust

The Dance Between Emotion and Motion

As someone who grew up dancing, I know I carry emotion in my body, and in order to gain access I have to move. In order for the reader to feel what I am writing about, I must first feel it myself, and that is not going to happen if I stay entirely in my head.

Movement helps me feel it. And when it’s a big feeling—grief, rage, shame, heartbreak—moving my body helps metabolize it. When we experience trauma or hold strong emotions, our bodies remember. They contract around those memories. Notice how we hold our breath or the body tenses up. If we don’t move them, we risk writing around the truth instead of into it. And I don’t have to run a marathon or take up kickboxing. I can simply take a deep breath, raise and lower my arms a few times, twist gently side to side–all in my deskchair.

Moving lets the emotion pass through me so it can move onto the page.
Otherwise, it stays stuck in the pipes.

Stillness Is Its Own Kind of Movement

Sometimes, the writing calls for the opposite.
Stillness. Not scrolling or skimming or daydreaming—but deliberate, open stillness.
The kind that invites something deeper in. The kind that looks like staring out the window.

This is the space where I can hear the quieter parts of my story—the voice of a child I’d forgotten to listen to, or the image I saw in a dream but brushed off. Lying still and staring at the ceiling can be just as powerful as dancing. For me, it is my meditation practice. It’s all part of the same body-based practice.

Final Thought: You Are the Instrument
Your body is not a machine that carries your brain to your desk.
I tell my students of both writing and dance that the body is an instrument that vibrates with memory, story, longing, and truth.
When you write from your whole body, your work carries a different kind of resonance.
So move.
Let the story or poem move with you.
And then write like your body remembers something your mind forgot.

Click this link for a quick 5-minute seated stretch to get the body moving and the words flowing: https://youtu.be/n0VlNd3nLFw


Ellis Elliott
Bewilderness Writing
https://bewildernesswriting.com/
Old Scratch Press Founding Member
https://oldscratchpress.com/
Author: Break in the Field poetry collection
and A Fire Circle Mystery: A Witch Awakens coming this May