Day Twenty-Seven

Welcome back, all, for the 27th Day of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo.

Today’s featured participant is Quest for Whirled Peas, where the call-and-response poem for Day 26 turned into a meditation on time!

Our poet in translation for Day 27 is Peru’s Luis Herndandez, whose selected poems, The School of Solitude, was recently published in English translation. His poems – often funny, and as often equally sad, were mostly written by hand in notebooks that he gave away to friends and even to strangers. Here’s one example that falls on the funny side of the equation, and five more can be found here. You can also look at images of the original notebooks here.

Finally, our prompt (optional, as always!) Today’s prompt comes to us from Megan Pattie, who points us to the work of the Irish poet Ciaran Carson, who increasingly writes using very long lines. Carson has stated that his lines are (partly) based on the seventeen syllables of the haiku, and that he strives to achieve the clarity of the haiku in each line. So today, Megan and I collectively challenge you to write a poem with very long lines. You can aim for seventeen syllables, but that’s just a rough guide. If you’re having trouble buying into the concept of long lines, maybe this essay on Whitman’s infamously leggy verse will convince you of their merits. Happy writing!