What is National Poetry Writing Month?
Welcome, art enthusiasts and wordsmiths alike, to another episode of Create Art Podcast! We are diving headfirst into the enchanting world of poetry as we celebrate National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo). This annual event, which takes place every April, encourages poets and aspiring writers around the globe to embrace their creativity and commit to writing a poem each day for the entire month.
The Beauty of National Poetry Writing Month:
NaPoWriMo, similar to its prose-centric counterpart National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), is a celebration of the written word and the boundless creativity that can flow when one dedicates themselves to a daily practice. Poets of all levels of expertise are invited to take part, from seasoned wordsmiths to those just dipping their toes into the vast ocean of verse.
Create Art Podcast has always been a haven for artists to share their creative processes, and NaPoWriMo offers a unique opportunity for poets to reflect on their craft. With a daily commitment to producing poetry, participants discover new facets of their writing style, experiment with various forms, and explore uncharted emotional territories.
Prompt for today
here’s today’s (optional) prompt, taken from our 2016 archives. Today, we challenge you to write a poem in which you closely describe an object or place, and then end with a much more abstract line that doesn’t seemingly have anything to do with that object or place, but which, of course, really does. The “surprise” ending to this James Wright poem is a good illustration of the effect we’re hoping you’ll achieve. An abstract, philosophical kind of statement closing out a poem that is otherwise intensely focused on physical, sensory details.
Poem for Today
Winning
16 April 24
Awakened by a child’s nightmare
The rest of the morning wrecked with thoughts that won’t stop
Remembering almost 16 years ago
Sleeping on a beanbag
Forgetting the name of the company I worked for
Remembering how I used to roll my own cigarettes
Smelling the encrusted tobacco on my yellowing fingers
Buying my first house and worrying about how to pay for it
The kid behind these eyes
With spiked hair and a ponytail
Modified mullet
Dangling earrings
Wearing a real leather jacket with chains
Always afraid of the dark
And the secrets it holds
Finding a tribe in the places that god hated
That same tribe dispersed throughout the big sky country
Listening to an old guy singing songs badly, on purpose
These thoughts come back as I hold my babies
I am a man
Not wanting to uphold the easy definition
These thoughts come through at 6:34 AM EDT
While a television plays the news of the world
And the fan cools the air
Moving it from one end of the room to the other
A child with pink eye, a child with anxiety
Two cats prowl the grounds
One with a single clouded eye, the other with diabetes
A snoring wife, whose dreams I am not allowed to see
A half-painted picture by numbers facing away from me
Photo Negatives is not how you should live your life
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