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!