Welcome back, everyone, for the second day of NaPoWriMo 2016. I hope that your experience of the first day filled you with confidence. And even if it didn’t, don’t worry – one of the nice things about writing thirty poems is they don’t all have to be slam dunks. NaPoWriMo is more about experimentation than perfection.
Today’s featured participant is Gene’s Musings, with a gently beautiful morning lune for Day One!
Before we move on to our poet in translation, I want to thank those of you who reminded me that I hadn’t yet posted our 2016 blog buttons! I also want to thank Aaron Compton, who came up with the term “GloPoWriMo,” or “Global Poetry Writing Month.” In addition to our standard NaPoWriMo buttons, I’ve made some GloPoWriMo banners for those of you who would like to trumpet your international participation!
Our poet in translation for today is Indonesia’s Toeti Herati. Born in 1933, she started publishing in her early forties, and her work is known for its feminist bent, using irony to expose Indonesian culture’s double standards. Very little of her work is available in English, but the Poetry Translation Center has posted English versions of seven of her poems online, and also offers a dual-language chapbook featuring her work.
And now, our daily (optional) prompt. Today, I challenge you to write a poem that takes the form of a family portrait. You could write, for example, a stanza for each member of your family. You could also find an actual snapshot of your family and write a poem about it, spending a little bit of time on each person in the picture. You don’t need to observe any particular form or meter. Happy writing!
