NaPoWriMo 2014

Well, it's April and that can only mean only thing.... NaPoWriMo! National Poetry Writing 

Month is ON! The challenge to write a poem a day - that's 30 poems in 30 days - will either inspire and elate you or leave you hyperventilating and running for the hills! 

We happy simmering poets though, we relish it. Even though the challenge of it may, at first glance seem insurmountable and intimidating, if you give it a moment to settle and look closer, you'll see that it offers all kinds of opportunities for inspiration and motivation, not to mention the much-needed self-discipline to write daily. 

The official website: www.napowrimo.net offers daily prompts and daily poetry entries from participating bloggers. The prompts range from using specific poetic forms to quirky thematic takes: today for example, was to write a love poem to an inanimate object. The most fun exercise so far!

I took part in NaPo last year, and this year I've set up a separate blog for the month to publish the poems on. If you want to take a peep, you can click here: www.napowrimobysiobhan.blogspot.com or click on the icon I have (proudly) displayed at the top right-hand corner of this blog.  

This post is a week too late to probe the blogosphere for participating poets, but if you're doing it, I'd love to hear how you are getting on! Drop me a line, send me a link, share your experience. 

Thirty days of poetry, it's an all-in ride - exhilarating and exhausting. Live, breathe and eat poetry, almost. Some days the muse is silent, other days she shouts. What I'm enjoying most especially is - apart from the ongoing swapping of poems with other poet friends by email as a support system - is the proximity of words, the immersion of my whole thinking day in poetry.

Specifically the zinging feeling I have every morning when I wake up, knowing today is a day when I will write a poem, bad or good, by hook or by crook, but I WILL write one. I can't tell you what that feeling does to the big bad Block. It's a powerful antidote. Then there's the word-woozy feeling at the end of the day, when words hop and skip through my mind, not shy anymore but flamboyant, fueled by a new potential. And sleep is not a solace but a temptress, lulling me reluctantly away from a newly-discovered wonderful word world. 

Yep, that's pretty cool. 

~ Siobhán

*And for those of you who equate poetry with pain, and the involvement in NaPo as a marathon trek, then here is William Carlos Williams with the unapologetic truth of the process:

We do it because we love it so! :)