NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo is Coming!

Hello, all. It’s March 1, and that means that April is right around the corner, bringing lilacs, spring rains, and National/Global Poetry Writing Month! What is NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo? It’s your chance to stretch your poetry muscles by writing a poem a day for the month of April.

We’ve cleared out our list of participating websites for 2017, so if you’ll be posting your efforts to a blog or other internet space this year, you can go ahead and start submitting those links through our handy “Submit Your Site” form. We’ve also updated our search features, so you’ll be able to search for sites by name. [UPDATE: Thanks to those of you who pointed out bug in the Captcha plug-in in the submission form. We’ve fixed that issue, so let the submissions begin!]

And if you’re not planning to post your work online? No worries! Na/GloPoWriMo doesn’t require that at all. All you have to day is write a poem a day for April.

In previous years, we’ve featured a daily prompt, a participant, and provided you with some poetry-related information of general interest, such as links to new journals, etc. This year is no different. In addition to our (optional, as always) prompts and links to participants’ work, we’re going to be featuring brief interviews with poets who have new books out or forthcoming, interspersed with links to poetry craft resources.

And here’s our first craft resource, to whet your appetite. When I was a wee baby poet, my parents took notice of my interest with some bemusement, but as supportive parents do, they took themselves to a local bookstore and asked its proprietor what kind of book would be good for someone trying to write. That long-lost peddler of tomes pointed them toward Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. The book is pep-talky, accessible, and a little bit southwestern zen – it was quite the oddity for a teenager in a military town in the early 90s. But the book’s ethos of getting stuff down on paper without worrying, at least at first, about whether it or you are “good enough” really resonated with me, and is definitely something that informs our attitude here! Interested in learning more? Here’s an interview with Goldberg on the occasion of her book’s thirtieth anniversary, and appreciations of the book by Jennifer Ellis and Yvonne Spence.

We’ll be back next week with another resource for you, as we build up to our count-down to April 1! And if you have questions in the meantime, please contact us at napowrimonet AT gmail DOT com.