Tag Archives: NaPoWriMo

Anyone Was Not Sipping His Coffee (NaPoWriMo, Day 1)

anyone lived in a pretty how town,
but I never visited anyone very often.
Even my thoughts are orderly and
punctuated (though we often tried to
work them into some kind of disarray).
Many nights he tried, poor anyone,
until I rolled over into the welcome,
dark silence—my failure. I was annoyed,
once, when anyone forgot to meet me
at the station. I had to carry my suitcase
several blocks past the square, down
broken sidewalks and misspent alleys,
until I reached anyone’s door and pushed
my way in because anyone never did
answer even the loudest knock. He was,
that day, musing by the kitchen window;
it was open even though the first day of
spring in anyone’s town is never to be
believed. Anyone was not sipping his
coffee, which looked to be many days
old, thick as a mud puddle, with a skin
on top, taut and shiny as the face
of a balloon. I was fuming. But then
anyone smiled, raised a cloven hoof
in greeting, and there we were.
(and there we were)

 

 

NaPoWriMo, Day 1 prompt: Borrow the first line of a poem and write a new one. This particular first line is from e.e. cummings. I was going to choose something more obscure, but this poem mostly wrote itself while I was walking from my daughter’s school to my train station.

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I Will Follow You, Will You Follow Me?: NaPoWriMo is Almost Here!

OK, who gets my musical reference?

Just wanted to do another quick post to encourage everyone to participate in NaPoWriMo. I’m very excited about it because it was such a good time last year. You can read more about it at the site itself, but the basics are that you write a poem each day in April (there’s a daily prompt at the site) and then if you have a website or blog, you post your poem there if you’d like. Also if you’re really into it, there’s a place on the NaPoWriMo site where you can post a link to your own site, to indicate that you’re participating.

Then you hop around to see what everyone else is doing … and sit back in astonishment as the traffic to your site goes through the roof. 

Expect a poem here each day in April, and I hope to see yours, too!

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Very Excited for Next Month

… because April is time for NaPoWriMo, which was so much fun last year. Similar to NaNoWrIMo but geared toward those of us who wri pos rather than nos (when it comes to fiction, I was always pretty good at setting the scene and developing characters—I just couldn’t figure out what should happen to them), NaPoWriMo is a daily writing challenge created by poet Maureen Thorson in 2003.

Each day in April, a prompt is posted, ranging from a general topic to a very specific—and sometimes very unusual—poetic form. You can write based on that prompt or just write any kind of poem. If you don’t have a blog or a website and don’t wish to create one—or if you don’t want to post unpublished poems on it—that’s all there is to it.

But to my mind, the real fun comes if you do have a blog and are willing to post poems there (more on that in a minute). I did NaPoWriMo for the first time last year and was just astounded by how much new traffic I got that way, and by how many outstanding poets I encountered for the first time by bouncing around the page of links to participants’ sites. Some of those connections remain to this day, and I treasure them.

The whole experience was so reinvigorating and enlightening—and fun. I highly recommend it.

A word to those who are new to poetry or who are writing again after a long lapse: Go for it. If you’re thinking you could never post a poem and thus make it available for public comment, please know that there are (in my experience) very few trolls among the writers and readers of poetry blogs.

Members of this loose community all seem to understand how difficult it can be to express so much in such a compressed space. Whatever your style and whatever your level of experience, you are sure to find appreciative readers this way, and any suggestions you might receive will be gentle and constructive. April would be a great time to give it a try!

And, for the more experienced, a word about the relative wisdom/foolhardiness of posting poems that you might want to submit for publication someday: I know the risks, but I go for it anyway—weekly year-round, and daily in April.

Why?

For one thing, there no longer seems to be ironclad consensus that a blog-posted poem counts as a previously published poem (which, as you probably know, is the kiss of death as far as many publications are concerned). Things seem to be easing up a bit, and if you ask around—as I have—you might find—as I have—that editors at some very reputable publications will consider poems that have been posted on your own blog (as opposed to in online literary publications).

Also, the poems I write for challenges of this type don’t tend to be the ones I submit for publication. Sometimes the exercise is enough, and it doesn’t feel as if I need to do anything further with them. Other times, they might be perfect additions to a chapbook manuscript (and for chapbooks, it’s totally fine if individual poems have been published elsewhere) or a springboard for something else.

And it’s just fun (which I think I’ve mentioned). It’s so much fun that I almost don’t mind it if I am “wasting” an entire month of poems. That is, even if they all bear the dreaded PP badge and are banished to the land of wind and ghosts, it would still be worth it. And again, no poem is ever wasted—because one that I post in April might spark an idea for something else entirely a few months down the road.

Also in April (and again in November) is a poem-a-day challenge through Writer’s Digest. I’ve done that one before and have enjoyed it but will not be doing it this time. I feel pretty busy lately and would like to focus on just one daily writing challenge; two felt like a bit much last April.

I chose NaPoWriMo for this year because the action is mainly at the individual participants’ blogs, whereas the Writer’s Digest one lives mainly in the comments section of a particular blog at the WD site. There are workarounds—you can certainly post on your own blog as well as in the comments—but the daily ping ping ping of new visitors and the fun of visiting other poets’ blogs make NaPoWriMo impossible for me to resist.

To each his or her own, though, and that comments section at Poetic Asides—the WD blog that hosts the other challenge I’m talking about—does become its own sort of community, which has its own appeal. It just depends what you’re after, and you should definitely check out both. 

Will I see you in April? Whether you take up a daily challenge or not, I hope it’s a big—and fun—month for you and your writing!

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Are You Writing a Book? Seeking Blog Hop Participants

Hello, friends, followers, likers, and lurkers …

The fabulous poet and blogger Jennifer Bullis, whom I “met” during last year’s NaPoWriMo, recently tagged me for a project called Blog Hop: The Next Big Thing. This is intended for those of us who have books we’re working on, shopping around, or getting ready to publish. It’s open to writers of poetry and prose, and chapbooks count — that’s what I’ll be highlighting in my own Next Big Thing post, on February 12.

In addition to answering a few interview questions, each participant is supposed to tag three to five writers to participate as well. That’s where you come in.

I know that many or most of you with whom I cross paths in the blogosphere, and especially through Open Link Night, are writers. What I don’t know is which of you have a book in the works. If that’s you, please let me know in the comments here.

Also, here’s a little “honor system” request: I believe the spirit of the exercise is that we’re calling attention to writers with whom we’ve had some interaction so that we’re saying, “Here are these great writers I know, and they’re going to tell you what they’re working on.” So I’d like to prioritize people with whom I’ve exchanged comments in the past — or at least, mutual “likes.”

I think everything should be pretty clear from Jennifer’s post (thanks again for tagging me, Jennifer!), but I can answer any questions you might have.

If I end up with more than five potential “taggees,” I’ll think of another way to highlight the writers I’m not able to include in this project.

OK … Tag — you’re it?

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Some Questions about Chapbooks

So, a few things are pointing me toward the idea that how I ought to spend May is in putting together a chapbook. First, as great as it is to get individual poems published here and there, I feel a bit scattered and would like to gather together a few things all in one spot. Second, since I did both NaPoWriMo and PAD, I’m looking down the barrel of 61 poems that many will now consider to be “previously published.” Non, je ne regrette rien, but still … 

In the past, I’ve entered a couple-few chapbook contests but have never won — and then I put that potential chapbook aside and move on to something else. I’ve never seen one through to the finish line before, and maybe this is the time to do it.

There are a couple of ways I don’t want to do this: 1) I don’t want to self-publish (because, as you might recall, I’m someone who really needs the stamp of approval that comes from acceptance letters), and 2) I don’t want to enter a contest (because I’ve found that’s a very expensive way to get a rejection letter — and I already get plenty of those, just for the cost of a SASE).

If someone could point me toward favorite publishers who do more of an “open call” deal where they choose a small handful of people to publish, that would be much appreciated! Also, if you read a lot of chapbooks and/or have opinions about how they should be put together, how unified do you think they should be? Might I be able to pull something together from what I’ve written in the past month, if I gather the ones that seem to have similar themes? Or must I write a couple dozen poems all on the same general subject?

(If the latter, you know it will be evil garden vegetables.)

Again, many thanks to anyone who wishes to weigh in with big thoughts on tiny books …

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NaPoWriMo, Day 29: A Double Dactyl (But Not Really)

The Despot Queen of Soap

Rub a dub, scrub a dub,
Queen Ranavalona
bathed on her balcony,
wearing a hat.

Slaves washed her naked flesh
as a crowd cheered and clapped;
there was nothing she liked
better than that.

 

 

This is a crazy form. Nuts. Let’s look at the requirements: 1) It’s supposed to be about a person. 2) The first line should be a nonsense phrase. 3) There should be two four-line stanzas. 4) In each stanza, lines one through three have six syllables, and the fourth has four. 4) The two fourth lines rhyme with each other. 5) And … the six syllables in each line should follow a pattern where a stressed syllable is followed two that are unstressed, and then you do that again. 

I think I got everything but that last part. I just … I can’t hear syllables very well at all. There’s a reason why, after a test in elementary school to see which band instruments suited us best, I was advised to *please* not play percussion. 

Also, Queen Ranavalona I ruled in Madagascar in the 19th century. This book (which I’m reading for kicks, not for life coaching or etiquette tips) is where I got the detail about her proclivity for bathing while wearing a hat and while citizens dutifully cheered. Sounds like a fun gal, except for the slaves … and she also ordered a lot of people to be burned at the stake, boiled alive, or chucked off mountains. There’s always something, isn’t there?

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NaPoWriMo, Day 28: Space

Snorkeling in Mexico

In a cave of chalk, the bats cling,
and some swoop. If you keep
your head down, you can

forget them; you can see yourself
clearly, chalk-gray hands and legs,
as if this is your real color, and
you’ve never seen it until now.

Your mask, your face in the water.
Look. There are tiny, colorless fish
darting through the one shaft of

dust-watered sun that lances down
from a hole in the roof of the cave
and unites everything, is the center,
the reason for all the life here.

Clearer than clear. Cleaner than clean.

At the edge, the mouth of the cave,
the people wait, your fellow tourists
who stepped out of the van, walked
down the farm path, like you, but
saw the bats and could not enter

this space, deep and cold, dark,
where you and your husband
drift in and out of the sun, until
you are no different from the fish.

 

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NaPoWriMo, Day 27: A Nursery Rhyme or Clapping Game

Itty Bitty

 

Itty bitty
small and pretty
left the country
for the city

Rode there in
a moving truck,
Mama waved and
wished her luck

Itty bitty
small and pretty
left the country
for the city

Began to knit,
then to sew,
then to weave
both high and low

Itty bitty
small and pretty
left the country
for the city

Climbed the wall,
began to spin,
how many flies
came … right … IN?

One
two
three
four
five …

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NaPoWriMo, Day 26: An Elegy

An Old Grief

 

I dance around the shape of loss,
these empty cups, these brittle bones;
sadness seeps into places I can’t name.

What is it when grief becomes
a slide across the sun, a scrim
so thick, the light diffuses,

footsteps down some other
hallway? What is the sound
when it’s all been said, when

there’s no more time for saying,
and life carries you like a little boat,
purposeful and aimless as a leaf? 

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