History of National Poetry Writing Month
National Poetry Writing Month (also known as NaPoWriMo) is a creative writing project held annually in April in which participants attempt to write a poem each day for one month. NaPoWriMo coincides with National Poetry Month in the United States of America and Canada.
This website is owned and operated by Maureen Thorson, a poet living in Washington, DC. Inspired by NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month), she started writing a poem a day for the month of April back in 2003, posting the poems on her blog. When other people started writing poems for April and posting them on their own blogs, Maureen linked to them. After a few years, so many people were doing NaPoWriMo that Maureen decided to launch an independent website for the project.
My History with National Poetry Writing Month
I started writing poetry in 1988 after I had been exposed to T.S. Elliot in my honors English class in high school. In 1992 I started reading my poetry publicly at Espresso Europia Coffee Shop in Abilene Tx while I was in the United States Air Force. While living in Rockford Illinois I published my first book of poetry Throwing Yourself at the Ground and Missing in 2007 followed by Postcards From Someone You Don’t Know in 2008 Wisdom From the Sack in 2010 and Shaving Crop Circles In My Chest Hair in 2017. You can get copies of all of these books in my merch section. In 2020 I started publishing my podcast version of the challenge and those can be viewed here for 2020 and here for 2021.
What I am doing differently for Poetry Month
For 2023 I am not going to be just writing poems in April, I will be writing poems all year round. Also, since I will be writing all year round, I am using a different source for my prompts. There is a blog called Think Written and you can find it here. I will also be performing these works at Katora Coffee House here in Fredericksburg Virginia on their Friday Night Snaps Open Mic Poetry reading. Some of the podcast episodes you will hear will be a live recording of me reading the poem to a live audience, other times I will be reading it in the comfort of my home studio. I do plan on posting my work to the NaPoWriMo site and interacting with the poets there and see if they want to read their work on this podcast.
Todays Poetry Prompt
Misfits: How it feels when you don’t belong in a group of others
Todays Poem
The Wind Gets Cold Out Here
11 Jan 2023
Mancave
It was a few years back during a thanksgiving meal
Seated with over 100 folks in uniform
Many of them my clients
It was a work function, attendance was strongly recommended
So, walking through the food line they set up
Making nice with everyone
Sat with a group of clients
And just like that, as happens in dinner tables all across America
Someone was making cracks at Michelle Obama
Saying how they shouldn’t let moneys wear such nice clothes
And no, it wasn’t the drunk racist uncle that no one listens to
It was a white college educated professional woman
Who happened to be in uniform
Who happened to be my client
Who happened to be looking for work with the Feds
Excusing myself
Wasn’t going to try and bash my head against the wall
As others in the group laughed along
Guess who she doesn’t work for
And the next line I was going to write
Was going to have been
Guess who got blackballed
But then I thought
Am I that far removed from them
I took the next job
After I lost three clients in 6 months
One to cancer, who wouldn’t admit defeat
One to a hold-up gone wrong on his last day of duty in front of his daughter
One who decided to take a long walk into a lake
I took that job to get away
To work with those that were told
To put kids in cages
And now their conscious got them better of them
And they were offing themselves in droves
The job was to make them feel better
And I get how they got into this mess
They had no future
No hope to achieve anything better
So, they signed themselves over
To uphold the law
And there I am, giving aid and comfort
To someone’s enemy
To someone’s nightmare
Will I be tried for war crimes
When it is my turn to cross over
Comforting those who do the things
That we won’t do
Who we rage against
Who are following orders
I have empathy for them
But I’ll never be in their club
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