Counting Down to April

It’s almost time to spark a literary poetic flame!! National Poetry Month is just five short days away. It may be a National Celebration, but poets all over the world will be participating.

A lot has been happening in our world, in our lives, in our hearts. It’s time to write about it.

Kindly.

With class.

With wisdom.

Tactfully.

Here are 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month.

What am I going to do?

• Download the National Poetry Month logo for my website and posts.
• Sign up for Poem-a-Day.
• Sign up for the 2018 April PAD Challenge!  Join us! Write a poem each day based on the prompt. This will be the 11th annual April Poem-A-Day. It’s a great way to connect with other poets.
• Each day, I’ll check in with poet laureate Walt over at the Phoenix Rising Poetry Guild.

So, buff off those metaphors! Sharpen your Iambic Pentameters! Wow us with rhyme!

It’s time to POEM!!

How will you celebrate?

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Poeming-Just for the Fun of it!

November 2017 PAD

If you haven’t yet, try this challenge–write one poem/day for the entire month of November. Then create a chapbook of your poems.

It’s adventurous. It’s irresistible. It’s fun!

Every October 31, I become feverish/frantic/deathly pale and deliriously pumped for this challenge. Each day, if you join, you’ll log into Writer’s Digest and check for the prompt.

Then, if you’re like me, you’ll obsess about it for a while knowing that the poetic geniuses already will have written ten breathtaking poems to my one simple teacup scribbling.

I’ve never won. Not even close. (Unless finishing is winning) But it zips me back into my cozy Autumn poeming sweater where I belong while summer settles into another faded calendar page.

Save some of that Halloween candy for the days when it seems like every word is the wrong word and you’re tempted to shrivel from the embarrassment that anything so trivial and full of blight could cross your imagination. The sugar (or chocolate) just might appease your unruly muse.

The rules/not rules are here:

2017 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Guidelines

Happy Poeming!!

Why I Write Poetry

A few weeks ago Robert Lee Brewer, Writer’s Digest Poetry guru, put out a call for essays from poets to explain why they write poetry.

The why isn’t easy putting into words. And I’m not sure I even touched on the real reason. Like onions, there are layers of poetic insight and reflection. The simple answer is more like–I write poetry because . . .  just because.

• Because it is.

Frankly, I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t.

If you write poetry, why? If you don’t, why not?

Here’s my essay which was published on the WD site:

The Other Side of Love

The Other Side of Love

What she told me then—

It’s all ending—
this burden.

Beyond time Behind locks
fear is something else

and she wore it like a queen.

2017 April PAD Challenge: Day 30

 

High on Perfection

High on Perfection

The prosodist dwells in the literary fountain,
with deep-throated roars of rising anger
splashing through waves of free writing,

fighting against streams of consciousness
reading aloud for foreign stones that trip
his tingling tongue, prying corroded spondees

off the pages, his mouth twisting as he spits
them out with rhythmic pounding, juggling
them with trochees and pure pearly iambs,

soft as lambs.

 

2017 April PAD Challenge: Day 29

when we returned

when we returned

there’s thunder
rising toward heaven
and the children have gone home

rain is falling somewhere
across this sleeping world

the old man writes quietly
in front of the open fireplace

his sweet dreams becoming
clear as he fills the page

when he thinks nobody is listening,
he sings softly about faith and battles

now that we’ve grown weary of
imaginary joy, (we are fools)

we hear things unspoken

it’s only natural that the scent
of his wisdom
lingers on

2017 April PAD Challenge: Day 28