Day 19

Hello, all, and welcome back for Day 19 of NaPoWriMo.

Our featured participant today is Camionneuse, where the multi-scene poem for Day 18’s “urgent journey/message” prompt really conveys, at once, a sense of rush and specific moments in time.

Today’s poetry resource is: THEthe Poetry Blog, a blog on poetics aimed at poets and non-poets alike. The blog regularly features new poetry, as well as essays, interviews, and reviews.

And for today’s prompt (optional, as always!), I’d like to challenge you to write a landay. Landays are 22-syllable couplets, generally rhyming. The form comes from Afghanistan, where women often use it in verses that range from the sly and humorous to the deeply sardonic and melancholy. Check out this long investigative article on landays for a fascinating look into a form of poetry often composed in secret, and rarely written down. You could try to write a single landay – a hard-hitting couplet that shares some secret (or unspoken) truth, or you could try to write a poem that strings multiple landays together like stanzas (maybe something akin to a syllabic ghazal?)

Happy Writing!