NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 29

Welcome back, everyone, for the penultimate day of Na/GloPoWriMo Day 29. I hope today you’ll be writing your 29th poem of the month! And even if it’s only your tenth, or even your first, well, that’s more poems than you started with, isn’t it?

Our featured participant today is What Rhymes with Stanza, where the postcard poem for Day Twenty-Eight is a pun-filled prose poem actually laid out as a postcard.

Today we have new interview (and our last for this year!), with the poet Chris Tonelli’s, whose second full-length poetry collection, Whatever Stasis, is just out from Barrelhouse Books. You can read some of Tonelli’s poetry here and here, and our interview with him here.

And now for our daily prompt (optional, as always). Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the Plath Poetry Project’s calendar. Simply pick a poem from the calendar, and then write a poem that responds or engages with your chosen Plath poem in some way.

My WPL projects involved a lot of poetry written in response to those read. So I look forward to tackling this poem.

I actually found it harder than I expected. It was a chance to read a lot of Plath’s poems, I finally chose Edge – which may not be in the linked archive.

My response poem was a lot shorter, just 3 stanzas.

the silk growns Queenlike

 

 The Poetry School Day 29

Day 29: Amnesty Day

Today, the penultimate day of NaPoWriMo, is amnesty day. It’s a day to do any or all of the following things:

1) Go back and try some prompts you missed, or want another go at.

 

2) Edit or redraft a poem from a previous prompt.

NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 28

Hello, all! There are just three days left in our April poetry-writing adventure! I hope you’ve been enjoying it.

Our featured participant today is Thoughts of Words, where the Tarot poem for Day Twenty-Seven features a poetical hermit.

Today, we bring you a new craft resource, in the form of this history and exploration of the prose poem. This essay helpfully catalogs several different styles of prose poem, with examples, and possible strategies for writing.

And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Following the suggestion of our craft resource, we challenge you today to draft a prose poem in the form/style of a postcard. If you need some inspiration, why not check out some images of vintage postcards? I’m particularly fond of this one.

Happy writing!

I did a workshop several years ago with old postcards, so after looking at the NaPo link I started to research for postcard images from England, one came up with the letter writing side so from there I copied more postcard messages as a starting point.

 

The town is lopsided, one could easily feel drunk
looking at sloping rooftops.

 

 The Poetry School Day 28

Day 28: Music 

“Where words fail, music speaks.” ― Hans Christian Andersen

Before we move on, a note on yesterday’s prompt. If anyone wants to continue practising their iambic pentameter (ip), or any other metre they choose, a good habit to get into is to spend five minutes every day, or whenever you can, writing nonsense verse into your notebook in ip. Don’t worry about the sense — at all.

Anyway!

Today I would like you to write a poem while listening to music. For some this may be your regular practice; for some (like me) it will drive you up the wall. Try it either way. It can be the same song on repeat, or perhaps an album of songs all by the same artist, or an entire piece by a composer, but don’t try this with the radio, a mixed-artist playlist, or anything like that. I want you to sink into and feel the music, which can’t be done if it keeps changing.

Once your music is playing, begin to free-write, without stopping, until you can feel the poem emerge. At which point, it will probably be tempting to turn the music off, or mentally drown it out. Don’t. Try and let it in. Try and let the rhythm, the melody, the tone, and the mood affect the way you write.

I should say that your poem doesn’t need to be about the music. It may be preferable to write about something else, perhaps. For obvious reasons, no example poems today, but a nod in the general direction of two poets who I know write with music very much in mind: Bridget Minamore, whose pamphlet Titanic comes with recommended listening (!) and Rishi Dastidar, who, rumour has it, likes to blast music at his workshop students to stimulate emotions.

 

It is true! I was fortunate enough to do Rishi Dastidar’s Call & Response workshop at Swindon Poetry Festival last year and thoroughly enjoyed using music to wake muse up!

I have also used music several times to write poetry, Candy Royalle used music in her workshop I was in a few years ago too. I do not have the time to write more than one NaPo poem as I am on catch up and have writing deadlines to meet this evening, but what the heck… it only happens once a year, right?

 

 

NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 27

I have fallen behind at the tail end of NaPoWriMo, not surprisingly as I have had festival appearances, events and a Book Launch over the past 3 days.

Attempting to catch up but also have submission deadlines so may end NaPo in May.

Hello all, and welcome back for Day Twenty-Seven of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant today is Real Momma Ramblings, where getting breakfast on the table takes all five senses and strong nerves to boot.

Today we have a new interview for you, with Lauren Hunter, whose first book of poetry, HUMAN ACHIEVEMENTS, was published last year by Birds LLC. You can read some of Hunter’s poetry here and here, and you can check out our interview with her here.

And now for today’s (optional) prompt. Following Lauren Hunter’s practice of relying on tarot cards to generate ideas for poems, we challenge you to pick a card (any card) from this online guide to the tarot, and then to write a poem inspired either by the card or by the images or ideas that are associated with it.

I read this prompt before work on the day it was posted. I spent the hours in between work preparing and rehearsing my set for Bohemian Voices (which was a lovely event, I will write a review soon).

Last year I started to look into fortune telling as research for a sequence of poems, one of which won me the Poet Laureateship of Worcestershire and apparently wowed all 5 judges. I look forward to writing a poem for this prompt, I explored the website and picked my card, I only looked at 2. The ideas have been bouncing around the back of my head as I was out on the road going to gigs (helped that the motorway had a 30 mph restriction)! Gave me more thinking time.

I chose ‘The Star’ and wrote about the figure on the card.

…                              the star
shines with unveiled truth

 The Poetry School Day 27

Day 27: Blank Verse

Blank verse – unrhymed iambic pentameter – is the living history of modern English poetry. It is Shakespeare, Milton and Tennyson, and even if you never use it again, you should give it a go, as learning to write it will help you read (and hear) them. It sounds like this (stresses in bold and feet marked with | ):

The woods | decay, | the woods | decay | and fall, 
The va | pours weep | their bur | then to | the ground, 
Man comes | and tills | the field | and lies | beneath

That’s Tennyson’s ‘Tithonus’, by the way. Note that it doesn’t have to be perfect. Here’s the next line, which has an extra syllable:

And af  |  ter ma | ny a | sum mer | dies the | swan. 

Iambic pentameter should be the basic pulse, though, and try to stick to five beats a line. 

To get the feel of it, I suggest you pick any section of Milton’s Paradise Lost — I like the beginning of Book II: 

High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous east with richest hand
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
To that bad eminence; and, from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain war with Heaven….

Your example poem today is ‘Mending Wall’ by Robert Frost (you’ll have to scroll down a bit). The version given here has been marked with the stresses (though you may, of course, scan it differently), and there’s an audio recording of Frost to help you with the rhythm. 

SUBMISSIONS OPEN Contour Final WPL Issue 4

Open Submissions, the final call for Contour WPL Poetry Magazine.
Issue 4 Celebration / End of an Era
1st May – Deadline 10th June

Poet Laureate

The final WPL Contour Poetry Magazine will be produced in June after my Laureateship is handed over.

The magazine will go live in July. I will post it on this website alongside archive material from my year as Worcestershire Poet Laureate. 

Future plans

I have plans to keep Contour – either as an annual or bi-annual magazine and will be posting open submission calls over on my blog https://awritersfountain.wordpress.com/ so if you are not already one of the 1,198 readers of AWF, get yourselves signed up. 

The 4th Issue will be on the theme of

Celebration/End of an Era

Submission Guidelines: 

Please follow these guidelines carefully or submissions will not be considered.

Submit 1-3 poems, maximum 40 lines 

in the body of an email 

Subject line CONTOUR CELEBRATION

on the theme of celebration/ end of an era.

Include a 75 word Bio written in 3rd person

to worcspl[at]gmail[dot]com

Poems must…

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