Yesterday marks my fifth year of writing a poem every day in the month of April.
When I started in April of 2018, I did it as a Camp NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) project. A couple of years ago I discovered NaPoWriMo — National Poetry Writing Month. This wonderful website gives daily prompts along with featuring poetry publications and poems. I followed these prompts almost every day and in the process I learned a few new styles.
This past April I wrote a Glosa (a quatrain poem that responds to another poem,) a Nonet (a nine-line poem which begins with 9 syllables and descends down to 1,) an Aisling (an Irish vision or dream poem,) and two new Sonnet poems: the Curtal and the Duplex Sonnets, both of which follow a certain pattern or rhyme scheme. I also wrote new couplets, quatrains, acrostic, haiku, limerick, etc. It has been an education to say the least.
Do I feel ready to send all of these poems out for a contest or publication? Definitely not. But I believe I wrote a few golden nuggets in the process.
In March, I read a book to prepare me for poetry month. It is titled A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver. She highlights syllable counts within sonnets and other styles and gives examples from many celebrated poets, notably Robert Frost. I learned that Oliver revises her poems many times over until she is satisfied. For some reason, that came as an epiphany to me. I always figured that poets like Oliver would just exude brilliance on her first attempts and not need too much revision. I now realize that I could go back and alter previous poems that I mostly liked but with which I was not completely satisfied.
All of this effort brings to mind the question of why we write poetry in the first place. There are varied reasons but some of mine are to capture both what is going on inside me as well as around me. Many poets intertwine the two to reflect how their world is affecting them personally. Two years ago, I wrote a lot of poems related to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. They dealt with isolation, events and places being closed down and the like.
I also write poems related to current travels and events. Because spring break occurs in April for my (former) high school students, my poems of 2018 and 2019 reflect the places where I wrote them: Utah, Las Vegas and southern California. Blessedly, I visited New Orleans a few weeks ago and I wrote three poems related to the city or the state of Louisiana.
The above image reflects the theme I gave to this year’s collection: Enchantment. This title is inspired by many things: my recent move to San Antonio and my many discoveries about this historic city, the Fiesta event which celebrates San Jacinto Day among other things, the movie Encanto and its outstanding music and what I call living in a post COVID world. I realize that we are still dealing with its effects, but with vaccines and many restrictions lifted, it definitely feels like a happier time.
But as I was writing these poems, I could not overlook the tragedy that is happening in Ukraine; I wrote two of them as a dedication to the innocent victims of this war. I also wrote one on the division in our country that is both political and cultural. As always, I wrote poems reflecting my faith and commitment to it.
Poetry month is over and it was a whirlwind. I will miss the daily prompts which got me thinking in so many directions. But perhaps I can collect the pieces of my scattered brain and put them back into my novel revisions as well as developing new stories and poems that I decide to write when I am moved to do so.
But for April of 2022, I have created a mini time capsule that I can look back on in future years and remember what I was experiencing. As with previous years, it was anything but boring!
