Our World Word by Word

Lisa Rizzo 4/30/14 Lisa Rizzo 4/30/14

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:

flocks of hoodies swoop
middle school hallways winging true for June's promise

Lisa Rizzo 4/29/14 Lisa Rizzo 4/29/14

Day 29 National Poetry Month

turn east to face dawn
birds sing tree-ward morning songs
pull sun from night's bed

Lisa Rizzo 4/28/14 Lisa Rizzo 4/28/14

Day 28 National Poetry Month

Gracie Bee, Azure
Constellation, Pegasus
sailing poetry

Lisa Rizzo 4/27/14 Lisa Rizzo 4/27/14

Day 27 National Poetry Month

beneath Golden Gate
sails wind bowed gold-dipped bay splash
salt spray baptism

Lisa Rizzo 4/26/14 Lisa Rizzo 4/26/14

Day 26 National Poetry Month

Chagall's Blue Angel

she beckons us come
closer float into her world
name those blue flowers

Lisa Rizzo 4/25/14 Lisa Rizzo 4/25/14

Day 25 National Poetry Month

dreams of late haiku
by dawn it had fled so sad
this overfilled brain

Lisa Rizzo 4/24/14 Lisa Rizzo 4/24/14

Day 24 National Poetry Month

scalloped clouds floating
washed in opal twilight we
surely become pearls

Lisa Rizzo 4/23/14 Lisa Rizzo 4/23/14

Day 23 National Poetry Month

Where is your story?
Where is your song? Chickadee
invites us to sing

Lisa Rizzo 4/22/14 Lisa Rizzo 4/22/14

Day 22 National Poetry Month

today half moon hides
behind wind-driven clouds while
dawn trees toss young leaves

Lisa Rizzo 4/21/14 Lisa Rizzo 4/21/14

Day 21 National Poetry Month

slow road down to sea
above green-graced hills such blue
yellow fields must shout

Lisa Rizzo 4/20/14 Lisa Rizzo 4/20/14

Happy National Poetry Month: My interview in The California Journal of Women Writers and Haiku Number 20

Recently Marcia Meier, my friend and fellow AROHO alum interviewed me for TCJWW: The California Journal of Women Writers. This online journal was founded in 2012 with the mission of "fostering and enhancing the visibility of North American female authors, and narrowing the wide gender gap found in discussions in the literary world" by featuring reviews of women’s literature as well as interviews. I am incredibly honored to appear on this wonderful site.

Interview: Lisa Rizzo

Marcia Meier recently spoke with Lisa Rizzo to discuss her poetry, motivations, and inspirations threaded throughout her work. Rizzo is a poet, blogger and world traveler who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. A middle school teacher by profession, Lisa has published a chapbook of her poetry and blogs frequently about her travel adventures. Her blog, Poet Teacher Seeks World, is chock-full of her insightful and keen observations during her global jaunts, which also informed much of her chapbook, In the Poem an Ocean. Her poems are earthly, nostalgic, piercing and always surprising.

Meier and Rizzo chatted recently about the poet’s passions and her life.

Meier: What inspired you to begin writing poetry?
Rizzo: I started writing poetry because I was desperate. Even though I had always wanted to write, I only dabbled with it until I was in college. Then I began to attempt writing fiction. I tried over and over to write stories that withered away to dust as I struggled with the characters and plot. I just couldn’t make them live. Then one day, sitting in the big chairs in the university library where I always sat, out of sheer frustration I abandoned prose and tried to write a poem. No, I wrote a poem. It came bursting out of me in one swift flow and that was it. I’m not sure why I had never tried poetry before. I guess I had never thought someone like me could write poems. All my traditional liberal arts education had made me feel that poets were people far out of my realm. But there it was, a poem.

To read the rest of the interview, visit TCJWW: The California Journal of Women Writers

Haiku Number 20
sun seeps through curtains
light motifs across wood floors
salute Spring-bright day