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Friday, September 27, 2019

Weekend Mini Challenge: Maladroit

Welcome to the Weekend Mini Challenge with Kim from Writing in North Norfolk.

Often when I'm reading, I come across a word that I would love to use in a poem and make a note of it for future reference. I recently wrote down ‘maladroit’, a word I have seen before, but this was the first time it made an impression on me - it may have been the context or my mood on the day I wrote it down.

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines ‘maladroit’ as an adjective meaning awkward in movement or unskilled in behaviour or action (clumsy) with the following example sentence:
‘She can be a little maladroit in social situations.’

Image result for the albatross by charles baudelaire
Image found on theguardian.com
Like many of the more interesting words in the English language, ‘maladroit’ comes from Old and Middle French: ‘mal’ meaning bad and ‘a droit’ meaning right, direct, straight or properly.

Charles Baudelaire used the term in the second stanza of his poem ‘L’albatros’ (he Albatross) from his collection Fleurs du mal (Flowers of evil), which you can read in French, together with various English translations, here: https://fleursdumal.org/poem/200

I found a great poem on Poem Hunter by Rebecca Kingswell, entitled ‘Maladroit Mechanisms’, which you can read here: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/maladroit-mechanisms/

This weekend, I would like you to write a new poem with the title ’Maladroit’ which conveys clumsiness, awkwardness and anything associated with that condition or feeling.

Here's a song from the Maladroit album by Weezer:


Join in by clicking on Mister Linky and filling in your name and url – not forgetting to tick the small ‘data’ box. And please remember to read and comment on other toads’ poems.

14 comments:

  1. Loved the prompt, Kim! ❤️❤️❤️

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  2. And you beat me to it with your gem of a poem, Sanaa! :) I've been Miss and Mrs Maladroit all my life, known for being clumsy, always tripping over my own feet and those of others. I just can't do graceful!

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  3. It's been a while since we've been to France (2016??) but the "droit" sounded like a driving command to me. Then it came, left and right are "gauche et droite."
    This will be a fun little Mini-Challenge write.
    ..

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  5. So many wonderful options for 'maladroit' ...

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  6. Thank you Kim for the "maladroit". It opens up a whole world of things to write about.

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  7. This took me ages! Then my muse woke up! Great prompt, Kim 😊

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  8. Joining late... brought you something from the library.

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  9. Short and sweet. Thank you. It took me a long time to figure it out - playing LATE

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  10. Thank you for making me use maladroit. 😃

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  11. Kim, this is such a fantastic word. I remember thinking, I wish I had time for the prompt and sighing. And nope, I really didn't have time for it (but I had to write something anyway... some prompts just refuse to be denied).

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