I am loving the commitment to NaPoWriMo already. I have decided to post everyday about the process of writing the poem and the prompt.
Last year, it was halfway through before I knew there were optionally daily prompts. The main website seems much clearer this year.
My idea/plan is to write a daily poem – something to journal each specific day but also attempt as many prompt poems as possible.
As with 2013 I will only post an extract from the poems, as there are copyright and publishing issues otherwise, I have no immediate plan with this body of work for April, however some might be suitable for submission and I am trying to build up my own collection of poems.
I have also decided to update this thread regularly with information about the different forms of poetry covered this month in the prompts. You can always give it a go even if you are not ready for the full force of NaPoWriMo.
A Pre- Day 1 Activity:
Ekphrastic Poetry
The prompt for all you early birds is an ekphrastic poem – a poem inspired by or about a work of art. There’s no rules on the form for an ekphrastic poem, so you could write a sonnet or a haiku or free verse.
Day 4: Lune
A lune is a sort of English-language variation on the haiku, meant to better render the tone of the Japanese haiku than the standard 5-7-5 format we all learned (and maybe loved) in elementary school. There are a couple of variants on the lune form, but just to keep things simple.
The first line has three words. The second line has five, and the third line has three. You can write a poem that consists of just one stanza, or link many lune-stanzas together into a unified poem. Happy writing!
Day 5: Golden Shovel
Today I challenge you to write a “golden shovel.” This form was invented by Terrance Hayes in his poem, The Golden Shovel. The last word of each line of Hayes’ poem is a word from Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem We Real Cool. You can read Brooks’ poem by reading the last word of each line of Hayes’ poem! Now, the golden shovel is a tricky form, but you can help keep it manageable by picking a short poem to shovel-ize.
awritersfountain 