Day Twenty Click here for full post.
As of today, we’re two-thirds of the way through Na/GloPoWriMo 2021.
Our featured participants today – First up is Lucky Cat Comics, which brings us a rhymed rant in the voice of a raccoon. Our second featured participant is Experience Writing, where you’ll find a rant not in the voice of an animal, but about an animal — namely, the perch.
Today, our featured reading is a pre-recorded one, a very recent reading given by American poet laureate Joy Harjo for Emory University. Before the reading, there are discussions of Harjo’s work by Craig Womack and Jennifer Foerster. If you’d like to skip these, go to minute 22 of the video.
Prompt: write a sijo. This is a traditional Korean poetic form. Typically, they are 14-16 syllables, and optimally each line will consist of two parts – like two sentences, or a sentence of two clauses divided by a comma. In terms of overall structure, a sijo functions like an abbreviated sonnet, in that the first line sets up an inquiry or discussion, the second line continues the discussion, and the third line resolves it with a “twist” or surprise. For more on the sijo, check out the primer here and a long list of examples in English, here.
Happy writing!
PROCESS NOTES:
I can’t believe we are 2/3 of the way through NaPoWriMo!
I started (as always) with the participants sites, I not only enjoyed the poems today but also the websites.
The Trash Panda's Lament (A Raccoon Sonnet)
is a poem from the point of view of an animal rant, it was amusing and entertaining and perhaps an extra nod to Shakespeare in sonnet form. Some of my favourite lines:
Oh foul vine threading on thy chain link fence. Tendrils wrapping chain, a viney citadel. Those bins, I do sense, are now concealing Corn, fish, and berry pie, most appealing.
The Trash Panda's Lament (A Raccoon Sonnet)
I had a good look around Meg’s site. The 2nd participant cleverly weaves 3 NaPo prompts into one poem. Maria L. Berg certainly manages ranty, a great air of frustration voiced in this poem.
soon swarming the ladder–
leaving a trail of excrement,
flaunting your occupancy
You slimy, slippery, carnivorous
cannibal,
but that’s another tease
isn’t it? The excitement
of the tug on the line
then your scales are sharp
and cut and you’re so full of
bones,
I had a good wander around this website too.
I listened to and read some of Jennifer Foerster’s poems and then re-watched the Emory University video.
The observant amongst you will realise there is no link for today’s reading, fear not – I was fortunate enough to attend this event last month (I am a huge fan of Joy Harjo), it was well worth a 2nd watch. Plus another chance to listen to some of Joy’s new album.
Welcome to the “Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series presents Joy Harjo” on March 20, 2021, hosted by the Rose Library at Emory University.
Harjo became the 23rd poet laureate of the United States in 2019, the first Native American to hold the title, and was recently appointed by the Library of Congress to a rare third term, to begin in September 2021. She is an internationally renowned musician, writer, and citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Oklahoma.
Emory University was founded in 1836 on the historic lands of the Muscogee (Creek) people, 15 years after the First Treaty of Indian Springs (1821) through which the US government acquired this area of land from the Muscogee Nation. After this treaty, many Muscogee people relocated to Alabama, and were then forcibly removed to present-day Oklahoma on the Trail of Tears in 1836.
Harjo’s poetry directly engages these histories of removal, displacement, dispossession, loss, resilience, and resistance.
She is the author of nine books of poetry, among them “An American Sunrise,” “Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings,” “How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems,” and “She Had Some Horses.” She is also the editor of two anthologies, including the recently released “Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry.”
The event was hosted by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library as part of the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library Reading Series, now in its 16th season. It was sponsored by the Hightower Fund and co-sponsored by the AJC Decatur Book Festival, presented by Emory University; Creative Writing Program at Emory University; Emory College of Arts and Sciences, and the Michael C. Carlos Museum.
PROMPT: The sijo is a new form to me so I followed the links and read up on it first. I enjoy short form poems and particularly Haiku and Tanka so I knew this would be a treat – and it was. I loved the way these forms bend language so you find the right words to fit the syllabic count and it changes how you (would) write completely. My brown land became yellow. I like the puzzle of working out how to keep the essence and lose the words!
I wrote about the place we go for nature walks – which is blemished somewhat with a motorway in the middle of the horizon – which presents itself as the twist in my Sijo.
… eyes on soil
I know I shall return to this form in future. Another enjoyable NaPo morning to celebrate reaching 2/3 of the challenge. At 2/3 point I have 23 poems *Twilight music*.
awritersfountain 