What Do Poets Do In April?

For many of us around the world, April has become NaPoWriMo, National (really international) Poetry Writing Month, with the goal of writing a new poem every day.

There are daily prompts available at Poetic Asides, imaginary garden with real toads, a Dirty Thirty group on facebook, and NaPoWriMo itself. Or you can do it unprompted.

I like to play in the garden with the toads. Their prompts appeal to me more than some others (a purely subjective thing) and I like that they are a fairly small group, so the obligatory participation isn't a  chore – and in any case the poetry there is so much to my taste, it's a joy to read it all.

The poems I write are being posted on my poetry blog, Enheduanna's Daughter. You can see them all in sequence via the tag April Poetry Month 2019, with the latest appearing at the top; or you can subscribe to be blog by email (click the little block of horizontal lines to reveal the sidebar where this option is available, then scroll down) ... or you can just dip into the blog from time to time and see what you see.  Oh, and I am also linking to the poems on facebook ... if you happen to have access to my timeline there.

'Why do you need prompts?' my friend Rob Schackne once asked me, implying that there is more than enough in life and the world to inspire us anyway. But I like the fact that the prompts, by taking me in unexpected directions, can pull from my unconscious things that might not otherwise have emerged ... not in quite the same way, if at all.

Besides, it's fun!

NaPoWriMo

 

Or actually IntPoWriMo* as I'm not of the nation that has National Poetry Month in April.

Whatever you call it, I've decided I'm doing it. Other Aprils recently I've participated in the Poetic Asides Poem A Day challenge hosted by Robert Lee Brewer; and my first online experience of this kind, also repeated since, was the September month of poetry at Poewar, hosted by John Hewett. Both great fun and inspirational. Robert and John, in their respective months, offer prompts for participants.

NaPoWriMo is simpler, and perhaps more challenging — just write a poem a day.

They'll be on my Passionate Crone blog. See you there in April!

*(International Poetry Month)