Category Archives: NaPoWriMo

Not at all sure

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I want to do this, but here goes.

It’s Lent, and my mother died barely two months ago, and her brother died eight days before her. I didn’t give up anything else for Lent, but vowed to write a poem a day. A sevenling a day, to be exact.

As Lent started in March and Easter comes in April, this meant that some of the discipline would cross over into NaPoWriMo, when I usually commit to the poem-a-day business.

I must admit I missed a week at the end of March, and will have to catch up. But the goal for Lent is forty sevenlings to lay the foundation for one long elegy. Taking inspiration, not surprisingly, from Tennyson’s In Memoriam; similar, but not the same.

So: March

NaPoWriMo time

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So here goes nothin’. Sharing poems by week. Understand (1) they are rough drafts and (2) they come from who knows where.

So let’s start it off with the April 1 offering:

On Smelling Yellow Elder for the First Time

I heard a wasp humming dozy
on the flower, drunk with nectar, bumble-heavy.
A wasp, nosing deep in plain flowers. The flowers
tremble in wind-breath, yellow
as sunshine, bright like butter,
hardy as billygoats, Their roots suck
water from tarmac. From limestone.
From rock and from sand. The wind
spreads new bushes like weeds.

Yellow elder, nation-flower,
not made for a woman’s ear like hibiscus,
or picture postcards like the poinciana,
or for a lady’s table like sprays of bougainvillea,
but small, soft and golden, tumbling in breezes.
I know you now. I have learned the sweet
scent of you, yellow elder:
lemon, and milk, and vanilla.

*

Continue reading →

Because it’s no longer March

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but April, it’s time for NaPoWriMo, that monthly madness where we write a poem a day.

Some certifiable folk are writing a poem a minute for 30 minutes. O joy. I leave to it and wish them best (and wonder how many will survive in the open, and how many will be institutionalized before their half-hour’s up).

In the past, I’ve listed poems of note from PFFA’s NaPo habit. This month I’m teaching once again, which means that marking is my lot. I cannot promise much — it’ll be a challenge to write the poem a day — but I’d like to kick off with the first thread to watch:

Jee Leong’s “A Lover’s Recourse”, which begins with a ghazal that I like. And I don’t like ghazals.

The bit I want to remember:

The cloudy pigeon, mutant dove, aches through the air,
nowhere safe to land, save the branches of the river.

Go see the lunacy for yourselves. Consider joining, if you must. But know this — PFFA’s changed its policy this year, so if you don’t post your first poem today, today, you will be disqualified from participating on the Poetry-Free-For-All.

NaPo Thread to Watch #8

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Romac’s.

Now his idea is worth following up. Inspired by Paradise Lost, he decided to write one long narrative poem, a sort of Scottish quest, throughout the month of April. I began to read it, and was fascinated by it. Highlights include:

and

as well as unrelated interludes, such as

and

NaPo Thread to Watch #6

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Well, it would have to be Sefton’s.

I’m sorry to be predictable, but I have to say that I enjoyed this thread enough to want to go back to it after NaPo — not to read it for the first time, but to savour it.

I don’t think I was alone. Kudos, Sef!

See for yourselves:

and

NaPo Thread to Watch #5

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Nanphi‘s.

I was impressed with her idea, which was to make herself a jar of different verse forms to be pulled randomly out, and then to write poems based on the forms.  In each case she explains what the prompt was.

and

NaPo Thread to Watch #3

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Sorella’s.

Sorella was one of the most faithful readers of my thread, and I didn’t have a chance to pay good attention to hers. Now I have some time, and I’m glad I checked it out.

Some of the poems that stuck with me:

and

NaPo Thread to Watch #2

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Hatrabbit’s. I have been following Dave Rowley’s poetry for about a year now, and I like what I see a whole lot. His NaPo thread featured some really cool poems, and is worth a visit.

Here’s a list of those that I’m particularly fond of. Note the particularly. I’m fond of them all.

and

NaPo Thread to Watch #1

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It’s Harry’s thread, which is a series of animal and nature poems written for children (nis nieces and nephews), and which boasts gems like:

and

Which isn’t to say that the rest isn’t worth reading, but it’s just to say that these are my favourites.

April 17

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Ragged Island

*removed*

About the NaPo Poems

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I’m going to move them off the Poetry page by Cinco de Mayo (this Friday).

I’ve set up a password-protected page for them. In time I may arrange it so that it only has links on it, and the poems themselves are password-protected. Why, you ask? Well, first, I’m not keen on keeping my stuff archived forever on this blog without any real order to it. And second, while publishers are going through their culture-change angst, I’d rather not have anything to impede the possibility of things being published. Times change and this policy may also change, in time. But that’s how it is for now.

So if you want to read them after the end of this week, you can contact me through the form at the bottom of this page to get the password.

Another thought. WordPress is a powerful host. Maybe one day I’ll set this blog up to accept subscriptions and the subscribers can have full access to the whole thing, passwords notwithstanding. How’s that sound?

Till then, though — Cinco de Mayo.

And I’m not even Mexican.

One more day to go

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… and that’s today. I have to come up with one more poem before the end of April.

I should make it a doozy.

Fat chance.

But here’s the thing, and I’d like some feedback.

I don’t plan to keep the NaPo poems up on the Poetry page long after April. Most of the time I leave poems there for a week — this time it’s been a month.

Here’s the question. Should I wipe the page tomorrow, May Day, or pick some other date to do so?

As I write, I’m thinking Cinco de Mayo might be appropriate, as (if I write this last poem) I will have vanquished April for the first time.

Any thoughts?

Cheers.

Just a NaPo observation

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I wanted to say that what’s really interesting about NaPo this year is the overall quality of the threads at PFFA. I haven’t really been following NaPo around the web (who has the time?) but I think — I could be wrong — that something’s happening that’s rather unexpected; this poem-a-day thing is churning up good stuff.

PFFA’s notoriously mean and narrow about what it considers poetry. It has to be stuff that has been through some sort of alchemical process, not just words on a page (which is what poetry tends to be considered throughout cyberspace and, I presume, in classrooms and bedroom around the English-writing world), or — horrors — emotions on a page, untouchable and sacred because, well, they’re y’know emotions. At PFFA moderators and regulars (of which I am one) are merciless in their striking down of things that should properly be kept in journals and not shared with humanity, and there are lots of tears.

You’d expect, then, for NaPo, which makes one write, write, write, to engender plenty of spew, with one or two gems.

My experience of this year’s threads, though, is the opposite. Lots of gems, and gems from people whose posts have been berated and belittled and shunted down from forums they don’t belong in. These are people of courage, by the way, people who have swallowed their pride and their hurt feelings and kept plugging.

But here’s the thing. It’s occurring to me that what they plugged on a regular basis was the Same Old Same Old — stuff that didn’t reach the bar, hit the mark, insert whatever cliche you will. But suddenly, in NaPo, gems are tumbling out.

Isn’t that the way it is with writing, especially poetry? It’s like priming a pump, clearing a line, digging a well. All the crap has to be cleared away first, and then, suddenly, you hit the real thing.

Congratulations to all those who have hit the real thing. Celebrations with all those who are spouting geysers of stuff that can be kept after April and made into pretty decent poems.

If you don’t believe me, go here, and just read:

napowrimo_plum.png

Or follow this link, and go play with Simon’s buttons.