TOP TIPS:
- If you are falling behind – do NOT worry.
- Do NOT put pressure on yourself to;
a) complete a poem
b) write an amazing poem
- On one of the days you have truly enjoyed, write a few sentences reflecting this and save it in your NaPo doc. file – or post it on your website. Then when you find yourself dipping, go back and read it and carry on.
As always to read the whole post click the Day to visit the main site.
Today, our featured participant is MD Kerr, where the business jargon for Day Eight produced a hallucinatory excursion into the language of companies advertising specialty tile. We know how exciting that sounds, but trust us.
Our video for the day is this BBC film of a poem called “The British.” When the sun never sets on your empire, you wind up with a lot of varied cuisine! Keep your eyes peeled for the cameo by a Roman centurion. Perhaps he’s going to check on Hadrian’s Wall?
Our prompt for the day asks you to engage in another kind of cross-cultural exercise, as it is inspired by the work of Sei Shonagon, a Japanese writer who lived more than 1000 years ago. She wrote a journal that came to be known as The Pillow Book. In it she recorded daily observations, court gossip, poems, aphorisms, and musings, including lists with titles like “Things That Have Lost Their Power,” “Adorable Things,” and “Things That Make Your Heart Beat Faster.” Today, I’d like to challenge you to write your own Sei Shonagon-style list of “things.” What things? Well, that’s for you to decide!
Happy writing!
NaPo Process Notes
I read the poem I THINK I’VE GOT IT ALREADY, THANKS from the participants site. I really enjoyed reading M D Kerr’s poem and also liked the website. I don’t often save the participant poems to my resources, but today there has been a copy & paste.
It made me realise with the ‘good bones’ of Maggie Smith’s poem and the ‘dream home’ here, that yesterday another (non-NaPo related) activity I was doing online was watching videos of abandoned homes. I like the parallel that M D Kerr managed and the generous gifting of words 
on this particular website. You can also listen to her NaPo poems on Soundcloud.
I then watched The British.
https://benjaminzephaniah.com/
I then read about the Japanese writer Sei Shōnagon, I love the idea of The Pillow Book// Makura No Sōshi.
On Writing
I am off to think about my own list of things.
Well so I thought… what I actually did is re-read the PDF of The Pillow Book and chose a title – Things That Have Lost Their Power, in my head I was about to write more than a list, I was going to elaborate.
Then this very short poem wrote itself.
Things That Have Lost Their Power
Catholic guilt,
daily showers,
never swallowing gum.
Hate.
awritersfountain 