Day Nine Click here to read in full.
Our featured participant today is Orangepeel, where you’ll find a very touching poem based on our Spoon River prompt.
Today’s reading is a live event that will take place tomorrow, April 10, at 5 p.m. eastern daylight time. It will involve the poets Will Alexander and Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge reading for New York City’s Segue reading series.
Our prompt for the day is to write a poem in the form of a “to-do list.” The fun of this prompt is to make it the “to-do list” of an unusual person or character. For example, what’s on the Tooth Fairy’s to-do list?… Your list can be a mix of extremely boring things and wild things…
Happy writing!
PROCESS NOTES:
I started Day 9 like this! ^ Why? I had a To Do list already (not ironic… just a daily map), some days when I get up it can take my body an hour or so to sort itself out and this was one of those days. So my TO DO list was delayed by a couple of hours and I had an event at 11 and another at 4 with a the gap between to squeeze a lot in, including work on 4 new poems and a few areas of research. So I was really happy to discover today’s prompt was a manageable one and I had time for it.
Sometimes during NaPoWriMo you can feel like the above picture, try your best to STOP if you do, this month is meant to be ENJOYABLE. Try bite size Napo like I have today.
How to BITESIZE NaPo:
- Read the site /prompt.
- Later revisit and complete link searches. I looked up the event reading.
- Later on I read the participant/feature poem – I stopped, remembering the Day 8 prompt and knew this was going to be a hard read. Deep breath…
- Later on, about 6 hours later I looked at the prompt and started my write.
I started with the featured poem.
A sad, tender work of loss. Many of us experience our first loss as children or teens. I lost family members as a child, but was 14 when I lost my first friend. This poet lost this friend over 50 years ago and Laurie is still very much a part of him. This was a powerful dramatic monologue.
You’ve navigated the highway well,
that treacherous stretch of road
that can flip us at any moment.
I have a feeling this prompt will have thrown a lot up for many of us.
I made notes of the reading and then read the prompt. I have written To Do list poems before in a workshop. I wanted to use a person who is connected to a current writing area. So I did a tiny bit of referencing first and then, as I have no time for a deeper dive today (starting events again in 20 minutes), I just completed a free write.
This by far has been the most challenging NaPo prompt! It took me 4 days to decide on my subject. I researched 2 historical figures and one creature before finally settling on a random image finder and settling on a loofah. I then fell down the rabbit hole of imagining it would imagine itself as other things. I freewrote in the end and it came out as a rounded list of 20 things on the TO DO list* ranging from pranking razor to repeating mantras and working through some personal issues. It is humorous – which delights me as my cannon of funny poems (after 6 years) is now approaching double figures! *Far too long for a real one.
8. Send another angry telepathy note to flannel
Some poems make you wait… it was worth it in the end!
awritersfountain 