Five days to go!
The final week of NaPo always feels strange, you have, by now become used to the daily writing and it feels alien that next week you will be released from the bounds. It takes a few weeks for this routine to feel anything other than arduous. I love writing and if I could write every day for the rest of my life, I would. But that doesn’t mean to say this challenge comes easily or feels glorious all of the time. Of course, within the first fortnight there were some incredible prompts, resources and poems and I had fun, but it takes a while to find your rhythm – and just as you do, the month closes.
Do not feel sad. Just keep going.
Enjoy!
As always for the full post, click the day.
Our featured participant for the day is Orangepeel, where the reference book poem for Day Twenty-Three is sure to put you in fits (emphasis totally intended).
Today’s featured video resource is this short film featuring a reading of Keats’ “To Autumn,” along with a sumptuously sensuous dessert. This video makes me hungry, and also, weirdly nostalgic for September!
And now for today’s prompt. Taking a cue from our video resource for the day, and from Keat’s poem, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that:
- Is specific to a season
- Uses imagery that relates to all five senses
- Includes a rhetorical question, (like Keats’ “where are the songs of spring?”)
Happy writing!
NaPo Process Notes
I started with the participant’s site. Bruce Niedt’s poem Complete Guide to Page 427 of the Dictionary was a wonderful read, although I baulked a bit when I got as far as flay and flense. The ending held humour and as far as poems go, they need reaction. It worked well. A fairly, fabulous, frolic with F words.
I saved Bruce’s poem to my NaPo resource file. He also inspired me to collect my own list of F words, which I have banked to use post-NaPo.
I then watched the film Honey Pears, and mostly got hungry. I enjoyed To Autumn by John Keats and the soundtrack, which breathed power into the poem.
I also found a copy of To Autumn to read and save to the resource file, it is a beautiful poem, one I know I have in a book somewhere – but in modern times it is good to have it on the laptop. You can listen to the audio on the Poetry Foundation website.
Today’s prompt asks for a lot to be included, it will need some thinking time.
On Writing
The prompt asks for the poem to refer to:
- a specific to a season
- use imagery that relates to all five senses
- include a rhetorical question, (like Keats’ “where are the songs of spring?”)
So, I go in search of seasons. I knew I wanted to write about Spring – as it is happening at present. The blossom is out in full bloom at the moment in the UK and we are experiencing sunny days and heat waves, followed, of course, by days of rain and thunderstorms. Slightly more than April Showers.
The first thing which came to me was the rhetorical question as my meteorologist search brought up meteorological and astronomical spring. I was happy about that as the rhetorical question was the part of today’s prompt which I was most panicked by.
Following a link at the bottom of the Met Office webpage, I read some spring facts which helped generate ideas for incorporating 5 senses into my poem.
And so today’s poem started in a very fragmented way, answering the call of thoughts in short words and phrases, sometimes stanzas dotted amongst copied facts, ready to be quilted into a rich example to fulfil every sense for the reader. (Or at least, that was my hope.)
By the end of my emptying-of-thoughts, I had sound and taste to fit in, I managed this easily within one verse and as homage to the video resource from today, included pears.
In the end the poem has 12 stanzas (one of the longest I have written this NaPo and the most sensual, thanks to a prompt asking for delivery for all the senses), is titled North of the Equator. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it and it has been hard choosing just one snippet to share.
watched our tulips wilt at the invasion of heat,
watered everything back to the glory of green
awritersfountain 