April is of course National Poetry Writing Month, NaPoWriMo, reclassified as Global Poetry Writing Month this year, GloPoWriMo. This is the 3rd year I have taken part, although I am on the go slow and as the end of the month is reached I am about to start Week 2. May is an extremely busy month but I will endeavour to complete the challenge by the end of the month too.
I had reached a plateau by the end of March and was mainly offline editing. This continued for most of April, I even missed Wenlock Poetry Festival, a staple event of mine since 2014. As with March I missed a lot of local events including a pop up poetry event in Birmingham, regular open mic/ spoken word nights and a few submission deadlines. I also missed a bid for an arts job that would have been right up my street. And I missed Kate Tempest at Waterstones and Attila the Stockbroker, the entire Stratford Literature Festival, including Shakespeare 400 events. Since January I’ve worked with Action Plans, but didn’t really write one for April and kind of flailed around achieving very little and missing a lot. 
I voted for some favourites in this year’s Saboteur Awards and got involved in a new poetry project of my own. I have also been asked to take part in some exciting events over the next few months.
I performed for the first time in weeks at an event organised by Mike Alma, an afternoon of music and spoken word in a church, it was a wonderful afternoon and left me feeling buoyant. All artists involved are hoping he will organise another one soon.
A fortnight later I performed again, this time for a Shakespeare Event the final Mouth & Music, this time really was the last. I had written a sonnet especially for the night (my first ever sonnet) and lost it on a computer file somewhere (I know – back up), so on Tuesday after The Collaborative Arts Network event I attended, which was an interesting event – Arts in Mental Health, I set about writing my set. It was a good night, complete with medieval musicians. I will write a post about it and link it up soon. 
The following night I went to 42 to share a set of ‘Bedevilled’ poetry and was booked for some Worcester LitFest Events.
Following a pile of rejections, I have experienced some success. 5 poems published this month. Dali Clock, from my forthcoming collection, was published by Hobo Review. A poem written especially for Fat Damsel was accepted by Take Ten. Living Emptiness will appear in the next issue. Shabda Press accepted Half Life, Shadows Burnt into Stone and Becquerel Town for the next anthology ‘Nuclear Impact Broken Atoms in Our Hands’.
I am now back on the Poetry Wagon having taken a little unscheduled break. Although I missed stanza for the second month running and a few deadlines scurried past before I could catch them.
We all need a break from time to time. Looking back at how busy last month was, it is no small wonder.
awritersfountain 