Day Fifteen
Hello, everyone! We’re halfway through NaPoWriMo. Congratulations to all who have made it this far.
Our featured participant today is Inktuition, where the dialogue poem for Day 14 retraces a conversation every writer has with him or herself probably about twenty times a day. Hopefully, NaPoWriMo is helping you all to overcome the “fear” part of your internal writing dialogue!
Today’s poetry resource answers the question you may not have known you had: What is a Chapbook? I’ll let you read more at the link, but in brief, a chapbook is a collection of poems – but one that is much shorter than the typical 48-60 pages of a full-length collection. 15-25 pages is typical. There are many small presses that specialize in publishing them, often in handmade editions. They can be a great way to get your poetry in front of your audience before you’ve built up the reputation and credibility that would lead a publisher to take a chance on a full-length collection. Plus, they’re fun to trade and collect! (Think of them as the Pokemon of poetry — “Chapbook, I choose you!”)
And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Today, I challenge you to write a poem that addresses itself or some aspect of its self (i.e. “Dear Poem,” or “what are my quatrains up to?”; “Couplet, come with me . . .”) This might seem a little meta at first, or even kind of cheesy. But it can be a great way of interrogating (or at least, asking polite questions) of your own writing process and the motivations you have for writing, and the motivations you ascribe to your readers.
Happy writing!
Day Fourteen
Two weeks down, two weeks and a bit to go!
Today, our featured participant is Grace Black Writes, where the riddle for Day 13 is full of wordplay.
Our featured resource today is Twitter Poetry Club. What’s that? Well, it’s a sort of loose project in which, on selected days, people take photos of poems (from books or printouts or what-have-you) and post them to twitter with the hashtag #twitterpoetryclub. There was a meeting last night, so if you search twitter for the #twitterpoetryclub tag, you’ll find oodles of new poems. To keep on top of when “meetings” are, check out the club’s online archive or follow the club’s organizer here. The club’s next meeting is currently scheduled for April 27.
And now for our optional prompt! Today, I challenge you to write a poem that takes the form of a dialogue. Your conversant could be real people, or be personifications, as in Andrew Marvell’s A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body, or Yeats’ A Dialogue of Self and Soul. Like Marvell, and Yeats, you could alternate stanzas between your two speakers, or perhaps you could give them alternating lines. Your speakers could be personifications, like those in Marvell and Yeats’ poems, or they could be two real people. Hopefully, this prompt will give you a chance to represent different points of view in the same poem, or possibly to create a dramatic sense of movement and tension within the poem.
Happy writing!
Day Thirteen
Hello, everyone, and welcome back for what I hope will be a lucky thirteenth day of NaPoWriMo.
Our featured participant today is Somewhere In-Between, where the poem for Day 13 takes us deep inside the vocabulary of cars. I have to admit, whenever anyone points out a particularly interesting car to me, my reaction is “Oh, yes, I see that one seems to have wheels, and um, yes, it drives on roads.” But as this poem shows, even though cars aren’t my thing, other people’s enthusiasm for them is genuine, and has a language of its own.
And today’s featured poetry resource is an “oldie but a goodie” – Poetry Daily. The site features a new poem each day, largely drawn from newly published books and issues of journals. It’s a great way to find new poems and poets and books!
And now for our prompt (as always, it’s optional!). In keeping with the mysterious quality of the number 13, today I challenge you to write a riddle poem. This poem should describe something without ever naming it. Perhaps each line could be a different metaphor for the same object? Maybe the title of the poem can be the “answer” to the riddle. The result could be a bit like our Day One poems of negation, but the lines don’t need to be expressed in negatives. To get you thinking, here’s one of my favorite examples of a “riddle” poem – Sylvia Plath’s “Metaphors”:
I’m a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising.
Money’s new-minted in this fat purse.
I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I’ve eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there’s no getting off.
Happy writing!
Day Twelve
Hello, everyone, and happy Sunday!
Our featured participant today is Colonialist’s Blog, where the poem for Day Eleven rather gently chides the whole idea of the Sapphics prompt, which unfortunately seems to have had more people knocking their heads against their desks than writing!
Today’s featured resource is Poetry Magazine’s National Poetry Month special download – a free digital copy of the April issue of Poetry Magazine, along with a playlist and video to accompany the issue.
And now for our prompt! Yesterday’s was a doozy, so today’s is much more laid-back (and optional, as always). It comes to us from Dr. Cynthia A. Cochran of Illinois College:
Here is a great prompt for anyone who likes to write descriptive prose but shudders at writing poetry–and it really works:
Describe in great detail your favorite room, place, meal, day, or person. You can do this in paragraph form.
Now cut unnecessary words like articles and determiners (a, the, that) and anything that isn’t really necessary for content; leave mainly nouns, verbs, a few adjectives.
Cut the lines where you see fit and, VOILA! A poem!
Day Eleven
Welcome back, all, for the second Saturday of NaPoWriMo!
Today’s featured participant is Brittany’s Blog of Random Things, where the abecedarian poem for Day Ten has visual elements. Swoop it goes!
You’ve heard that clothes make the man? Well, it may be that they make the poet, too — our featured resources for the day seem to think so, at any rate! Here’s a bit of sartorial Saturday silliness, in the form of a tumblr dedicated to poets and shoes. To round things out, here’s a project dedicated to poets and their jeans. Maybe you’ll be inspired to write an ode to denim yourself?
Our (optional) prompt for today departs from such concerns, however. Today, rather than being casual, I challenge you to get rather classically formal, and compose a poem in Sapphics. These are quatrains whose first three lines have eleven syllables, and the fourth, just five. There is also a very strict meter that alternates trochees (a two-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed, and the second unstressed) and dactyls (a three-syllable foot, with the first syllable stressed and the remainder unstressed). The first three lines consist of two trochees, a dactyl, and two more trochees. The fourth line is a dactyl, followed by a trochee.
It may be easier to hear the meter than to think about it – try reading this poem in Sapphics aloud to yourself, and you’ll see what an oracular tone it produces – the stressed beginnings of the lines produce a feeling of importance, while the unstressed syllables of the trochees keep the pace measured. Rhyming is optional, and if you begin to bridle at the strict meter, feel free to loosen it up!
Happy writing!
Day Ten
Today is the tenth day of NaPoWriMo. We’re one third of the way through!
Our featured participant today is Arakawa Fiction, where the visual poem for Day Nine is pretty keen both in terms of the poem’s shape and the wonderful use of calligraphy.
Our resource for the day is Entropy, an online journal of literature that, besides its many fine articles and poems, also hosts great posts on submission opportunities, a small press database, and more.
And now for today’s prompt (optional, as always): Today I challenge you to write an abecedarian poem – a poem with a structure derived from the alphabet. There are a couple of ways of doing this. You could write a poem of 26 words, in which each word begins with a successive letter of the alphabet. You could write a poem of 26 lines, where each line begins with a successive letter. Or finally, if you’d prefer to narrow your focus, perhaps you could write a poem which focuses on a few letters, using words that repeat them.
Happy writing!
Day Nine
Hello, all. Welcome back!
Today’s featured participant is Gram’s Ramblings. I noticed the poem for Day Three a few days back, and it fits so nicely in with today’s prompt that I’ve been saving it up! The curving, turning form of the lines both reinforces and reflects the subject matter, adding visual flair to the words.
Speaking of visual flair, our poetry resources today are meant to introduce you to the world of visual poetry. What’s that? Well, it’s sort of a spectrum ranging from poetry-with-visual-elements to visual artwork that incorporates text. Here’s a brief explanation with a portfolio of work. And here’s a curated collection of women’s visual poetry. And finally, here’s a collection of examples, with essays, from Ohio State University.
Our prompt for the day (optional, as always) plays of our resources. Today, I challenge you to write a visual poem. If that’s not specific enough, perhaps you can try your hand at a calligram? That’s a poem or other text in which the words are arranged into a specific shape or image. You might find inspiration in the famous calligrams written by Guillaume Apollinaire. And a word to the wise — the best way to cope with today’s exercise may well be to abandon your keyboard, and sit down with paper and pen (and maybe crayons or colored pencils or markers!)
Happy writing!
Day Eight
Welcome back, everyone, for Day Eight of NaPoWriMo.
Today’s featured participant is Marilyn Cavicchia, whose “money” poem for Day Seven veers from water to space to Scrooge McDuck.
Our poetry resource today is Michelle Detorie’s hilarious #whatshouldwecallpoets tumblr, which provides animated .gifs to express all your most inexpressible poetry-related emotions.
And now, without further ado, our prompt (optional as always) for Day Eight: today I challenge you to write a palinode. And what’s that? It’s a poem in which the poet retracts a statement made in an earlier poem. You could take that route or, if you don’t have an actual poetically-expressed statement you want to retract, maybe you could write a poem in which you explain your reasons for changing your mind about something. It could be anything from how you decided that you like anchovies after all to how you decided that annoying girl was actually cool enough that you married her.
Happy writing!
Day Seven
Hello, all! One week down, three-and-some-change to go!
Our featured participant today is Purple Toothed Grin, where the Monday morning aubade has a cinematic patina.
Today’s poetry resource is Jessica Piazza’s Poetry Has Value. Poetry rather famously “doesn’t pay,” but Piazza has decided to test that assertion, as well as the accompanying rhetoric of the “gift economy” and devaluation of poetry, by spending a year only submitting her work to paying venues. On the Poetry Has Value website, she interviews editors of journals that pay writers, keeps track of how she’s doing on actually making money, and features guest posts on the financial side of the poetry game.
And now our (optional!) prompt: keeping to the theme of poetry’s value, Wallace Stevens famously wrote that “money is a kind of poetry.” So today, I challenge you to write about money! It could be about not having enough, having too much (a nice kind of problem to have), the smell, or feel, or sensory aspects of money. It could also just be a poem about how we decide what has value or worth.
Happy writing!
Day Six
Hello, all! Welcome back – I hope you’re getting into the swing of things.
Our participant for today is Not Enough Poetry, which reworked and elaborated on Emily Dickinson’s “Wild Nights” in response to our “Be Your Own Emily” prompt.
So, we’ve learned about memorizing, reciting, and recording poems. Let’s give ourselves a bit of a break – Mondays are hard enough as it is – and settle into simply listening to some poems. Poetry podcasts have exploded over the last few years. Swing on over to iTunes and you’ll find a plethora of them. But I’ll point out a few to get things started: The Lannan Foundation’s podcast, the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Off the Shelf series, and the podcast series of the Scottish Poetry Library. Listen to some poetry next time your out on a walk, or during your commute!
Today’s (optional) prompt springs from the form known as the aubade. These are morning poems, about dawn and daybreak. Many aubades take the form of lovers’ morning farewells, but . . . today is Monday. So why not try a particularly Mondayish aubade – perhaps you could write it while listening to the Bangles’ iconic Manic Monday? Or maybe you could take in Phillip Larkin’s grim Aubade for inspiration (though it may just make you want to go back to bed). Your Monday aubade could incorporate lovey-dovey aspects, or it could opt to forego them until you’ve had your coffee.
Happy writing!