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Today marks the halfway point of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo 2020.
Our featured participant today is Bag of Anything, where you will find a bouquet of humorous clerihews in response to Day Fourteen’s inspirational prompt.
Today’s poetry resource is this PDF of Fred Moten’s first chapbook, Arkansas. Since publishing it in 2000, he has published numerous full-length poetry collections, including The Feel Trio, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2014.
Our prompt takes its cue from Arkansas. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by your favorite kind of music. Try to recreate the sounds and timing of a pop ballad, a jazz improvisation, or a Bach fugue. That could mean incorporating refrains, neologisms and flights of whimsy, or repeating/inverting lines or ideas. Perhaps a good way to start is to listen to your favorite piece of music and “free-write” for the duration of the piece, and then use what you’ve written as the building blocks for your poem.
This year, I have been using a notebook for my NaPo scribbles, which means I have a 10 day backlog of work that needs typing up and filing, I started the catch up this morning.
I am happy with today’s prompt, I have often used music to create poetry in workshops, for projects and just at my desk. I usually work in silence so it does make an impact.
I attended a workshop with Rishi Dastidar a few years ago at Swindon Poetry Festival, it was set around his collection ‘Ticker Tape’ (2017) and we used different musical tracks // playlist to freewrite.
©Wasafiri Magazine
I also love a NaPo chapbook resource and discovering poets and poems I do not know.
I started (as always) at the participating site. I enjoyed the poet archive of the clerihews, although it is not a form I like to write or read particularly, inspired to finish with the poet who gave us the form to begin with.
I saved the PDF for a good read post-NaPo and read up on Fred Moten. I also didn’t want to read his poems until after I had attempted the prompt. I read the review of The Feel Trio;
‘Moten keeps the music in the words. Often he’s swinging out boastful declarations like some young rap M.C. … in lines where… he sketches out his thoughts when “on tour” a playbook of the poet on the road.’
Then I went off to find some music to work with. I chose a track I used to listen to half a lifetime ago and it gifted me some surprising results!
awritersfountain 