
Our World Word by Word
NaPoWriMo Daily Challenge: A Poem for Ruth and Don
I have been writing (or trying to) a poem each day for the NaPoWriMo daily poetry challenge to commemorate National Poetry Month. As of today, April 28, I have written 24 poems. This year instead of posting all my sometimes feeble attempts to the public, I've only been brave enough to share them with other poet friends who are on the same journey. They know the struggles of trying to be almost brilliant every day.
Now that National Poetry Month is drawing to a close, I thought I'd take the plunge to share a few of my poems here. For Spring Break this year, I took my first trip to Hawaii to visit my good friends Ruth Thompson and Don Mitchell of Saddle Road Press, the publishers of my book Always a Blue House. There were a few days there in their lovely house on the Big Island when Ruth and I would be writing our poems on different floors.
So here is one for you, Ruth and Don:
Day 12
Silver Swords
Ruth raved about them,
thorny globes glistening
among lava falls
on the slope of Mauna Kea.
We bumped our way
along a rocky track,
like the roads in Tanzania,
distant plains spread out before us
green and gold like the Serengeti.
How could this be Hawaii?
Then there they were, shining
like unsheathed blades,
presence potent
as she had promised.
Slice of Life: NaPoWriMo
National Poetry Month: April 1, 2015
It's that time again: National Poetry Month which means I'll be participating in NaPoWriMo once again. Last year I posted a haiku on my blog every day in April. This year I'm determined to post different types of poems each day.
And if any of you want to write a poem to me, I'll post your work as well.
So taking courage in hand (who in her right mind would post poems when they are newborn?), here goes.
Day 1:
Day 30: Haiku Continues While Saying Goodbye to Poetry Month 2014
National Poetry Month has been more of an adventure than I had expected. I took up the challenge of posting a poem every day for 30 days to prove to myself that I have the writing discipline to follow through. After having proclaimed my intentions to my entire online community, I had many, many witnesses to watch my progress.
Of course already having pledged to write a haiku every day in 2014 helped. My haiku practice was already in place, but before April those poems had been posted only in a private Facebook group. For the month of April, I had to find the courage to send my little haiku out into the big, bad online world. And I admit at first I was very nervous. After all, it's difficult enough to write a poem every day, much less a good one. Sending out any poem, the good, the bad and the downright uninspired seemed like a huge risk.
But the response from readers has been more positive than I could have imagined. I've gained more followers on Twitter and have had some of my haiku re-tweeted to spread them even further. That amazed me. In a workshop I attended about creating an online presence as a poet, the director of Poet's House in New York advised tweeting lines of poetry. He was so right. There are actually people out there who are looking for poetry online. I just had to give them what they wanted.
I even have some readers who want me to continue posting my daily haiku for them. The encouragement and readership I've gained makes me feel the need to keep sharing - perhaps just less often. I have cringed when posting poems that I didn't think were worthy, so from now on I'll just share the highlights of my weekly practice. And keep the others to myself. But I promise that I will write a haiku every day for the rest of the year. I'm up to 119 with only 246 to go.
And so on this last day in April, the 30th day of haiku postings, I bid National Poetry Month 2014 adieu with one more springtime haiku:
middle school hallways winging true for June's promise