Tuesday, March 31, 2015

April Is National Poetry Month (NaPoWriMo)

For those of you who may not know, April is National Poetry Month. National Poetry Month, which takes place each April, is a celebration of poetry introduced in 1996 and organized by the Academy of American Poets as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States. You can learn more at their website: http://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/home

I don't know when poets around the country started challenging themselves to write a poem a day in April, but I started when I first saw other poets doing it online in 2008. The poets call this NaPoWriMo which is short for "National Poetry Writing Month" as a play on the November National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. I have put out a chapbook every year of my poems that I wrote during that time. The group of NYC poets that I was following online had the additional stipulation that the poems be posted daily without any editing. Because of this, when I did my chapbooks I didn't edit them and named my annual chapbooks "Unrefined Creativity" (each with the year of writing and a volume number).

This year I am challenging myself to write from fellow poet Rachel McKibbens' prompts she has in her blog archive (http://rachelmckibbens.blogspot.com/). I have been writing from her prompts over the years and have written some of my favorite poems from them. She posted 104 prompts from 2009-2013 and I have written from 22 of them. Now I hope to write another 30 more. Wish me luck!




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