Hello everyone!
Every April, people all around the country participate in National Poetry Writing Month. This is the poetical equivalent of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which takes place in November. Accordingly, April’s activity is known colloquially as NaPoWriMo.
Now, novelists in November generally take projects they already have sketched out or may even attempt fresh work; generally, they start off with a hard goal of number of words they want to bang out in thirty days’ time. Some people are very ambitious with their goals (say, 50K or more). Some others may begin with more modest aspirations. But in the main most people simply try to set some sort of pattern or routine, so that they can get acquainted with their own writing process or establish new (and hopefully improved) patterns of behavior.
With NaPoWriMo, people are free to flex their expectations in a similar way, but there is one main goal: composing one poem per day.
This sounds easy, doesn’t it! And it certainly can be. Some poems consist of only two lines. One of the most famous American poems is Ezra Pound’s couplet, “At a Station at the Metro”:
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough.
Some people go into NaPoWriMo with elaborate plans, such as writing interlocking Petrarchan sonnets. I’m not so ambitious. In fact, I haven’t really written poems in some time. But I am excited this year to give NaPoWriMo another good-old college try.
Now, the last time I attempted this project was in 2020. April of that year saw a phenomenon none of us had encountered before, so I thought I’d try to capture some of it, just as a manner of record-keeping. As expected, some of those poems were absolute stinkers. I mean, really not anything I normally would share with other people. (One rule of thumb for writers is to sock a new poem away in a drawer for 6-12 months in order to come back to it with fresh eyes; these were poems that could probably stay in the drawer and make a home there.)
But the process was the best thing I got out of it. Writing every day is a commitment, and completing the project gives you a sense of accomplishment. At least that’s what it did for me.
Maybe one of those poems was worth saving and maybe improving upon. I count that as a win. One out of thirty is a great ROI; as a general rule of thumb, maybe 1% of poems are up to snuff if you’re interested in sending them off for possible publication. Again, though, just establishing the routine and sticking with the program was its own reward.
So, what I aim to do this year is, if you will forgive me, a dry-run of what I might actually try to do in a more structured way next year. What I would like to do is a present a portable writing roundtable, where I would use materials from established texts, import examples from famous authors, and maybe “assign” or suggest writing projects for you to do on your own. This year, this is kind of for me to figure out, so it would be a work in progress. But I aim to use information from references that are tried and true to me. These include:
These are craft books, so I plan to glean them for exercises to share. Some focus more on underlying theory—that is, what strategies a writer may take in pursuing a particular form, for example, or choice in direction of the poem, or any number of unspoken elements (such as voice or tone). I’m excited because I just purchased Next Word, Better Word, so there’s a sense of going into the unknown.
Some days I’ll just post a poem by a well-known author without a particular assignment. Sometimes it’s just nice to admire.
So I invite you to participate in this project with me. The last time I did this, like I say, I was very low-key with it, just trying to dip my toe back in the water. I did an entire month of acrostics. It’s a very easy form, without many rules. Nothing has to rhyme; there is no minimum line length. If you want to follow along this month and write thirty days worth of limericks, that’s awesome! You may even work up to the double dactyl, what I consider to be the fancier side of a limerick.
I aim to post a new prompt around the same time every day, around 6:00 p.m. Eastern time (subject to change). And if you do want to come along, don’t feel pressured to actually post the pieces you generate. In fact, with the publishing rights of DailyKos as a Creative Commons platform, you might want to hold back anything that is superlative if you want to publish it elsewhere. (Many publications take first rights as standard and will not put into print anything that has been published before. Posting online counts as publishing.)
On that note, I will leave you with one of my acrostics from April 2020. This was April 3rd.
Throngs gather at grocery stores
Or dollar marts and swoop it up.
I’ve never seen anything
Like it in my life. It’s not going anywhere
Except when folks buy it in droves.
TP, folks. Regular old TP.
Perhaps practice
Anxiety management elsewhere.
Purchase things like normal.
Even though these are abnormal times,
Remember we all need to wipe when we go.
Remember, the writing is its own reward, not necessarily the finished product. Hope to see you around!