Tag Archives: National Poetry Writing Month

NaPoWriMo, Day 3

Posted on April 3, 2016 | 3 comments

NaPoWriMo 2016glopo2016button1I popped over to the NaPoWriMo site and found 1) they have made their official logo available for participants to use on their own blogs; and 2) someone came up with the brilliant idea of calling it Global Poetry Writing Month (GloPoWriMo), as people from all over the world are taking part, thanks to the marvels of the internet. I’m going to stick with my own cheesy NaPoWriMo banner because I think the tackiness suits me, but I’ll also display the official GloPoWriMo to welcome and celebrate all the international folks who stop by.

Today’s poetry prompt was the King of Pentacles from Juliet Sharman-Burke’s Beginner’s Guide to Tarot. I couldn’t find an image on the web, so I’ll be interested to know how the poem stands on its own. (Corn is used in the British sense that refers to cereal grain rather than the American sense that refers to maize.)

Harvest time

in my garden, I am king
the fruit-laden vines bow to me
the yellowing leaves dance before me
the corn bends its heavy head to me

in my garden, I am king
the rocks my throne
the five senses my body servants
and the rolling world my carriage

 

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Posted in Poetry, Tarot

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NaPoWriMo, Day 2

Posted on April 2, 2016 | 8 comments

My prompt for this poem was the Ten of Pentacles from Dana Driscoll’s Tarot of Trees. (Click here to see the card.) I tried to make this poem into a tanka but just wasn’t happy with the result. The syllables kept sliding into a different pattern, which I gradually realized was a variation on the traditional pattern (5-7-5-7-7). So here I give you a type of inverse tanka (7-5-7-5-5).

tenacious conifers grip
thin soil with woody
toes, their snow-bent, needled boughs
an elegant fringe
to the mountain’s cap

NaPoWriMo 2016

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Posted in Poetry, Tarot

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NaPoWriMo, Day 1

Posted on April 1, 2016 | 2 comments

Today marks the beginning of National Poetry Writing Month, or NaPoWriMo for short. We know this to be An Actual Thing because there is an official web site: www.NaPoWriMo.net. Check it out, because the site has links to all sorts of challenges, prompts, exercises, you name it.

What am I doing for NaPoWriMo this year? I’m glad you asked! I will be presenting a workshop next month on using tarot (and similar pictorial resources) as a tool for writing, so I have decided that my daily prompt will be a card drawn from my collection of physical and virtual decks.

Although I have committed to writing a poem every day, I will not necessarily post every day. Experience has taught me that my work is not always ready for a wider audience at first blush, and that my greatest contribution to literature may well be to refrain from publishing something. But not to worry; my expectations are low enough to allow a good deal of material through, and I plan to have fun this month, at my own expense if necessary.

As proof of that, I now unveil my very own homemade logo:

NaPoWriMo 2016

(Feel free to copy it and use it in any way that suits you.)

Happy poetry writing!

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Posted in Poetry

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Day Fourteen, NaPoWriMo 2015

Posted on April 14, 2015 | 2 comments

April is National Poetry Writing Month, or NaPoWriMo. It’s taken me a bit to get my bearings after the ten-ring circus that was spring break/Holy Week. I was very happy this poem pushed its way into my head while I was otherwise occupied with driving.

Clean cut

straight line
razor fine
smooth as sin
you wouldn’t know
if it weren’t a darker
shade of pink

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Posted in Poetry

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