GOLDEN ROOT

A golden root is a poetic form created by Laura Rockhold in which the first and last word in each line are drawn from a pre-existing poem to which the poet is paying homage.

Rockhold named it after its two sources of inspiration; Terrance Hayes’ golden shovel and Lucille Clifton’s poem “roots,” after which Rockhold’s poem “The Root of the Root” (forthcoming in her debut collection) is based.

A golden root uses every word (or a derivative of the word’s root) of the source poem; the last word in each line (top to bottom) is the first half of the source poem, and the first word in each line (bottom to top) is the second half of the source poem. The source poem holds the new poem, the new poem lives within the source.

GOLDEN ROOT PUBLICATIONS & AWARDS

• “All This Was A Nice Place Once” (after “earth” by Lucille Clifton from Good News About the Earth, New York: Random House, 1972) was published by Black Fox Literary Magazine, September 2022, Issue 23.

• “The Taking Hands” (after “Taking The Hands” by Robert Bly from Silence in the Snowy Fields, Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, Connecticut, 1962) was awarded the 2022 Bring Back The Prairies Award by the League of Minnesota Poets and was published in Cider Press Review, April 2024, Issue 26-1.