Tuesday, April 01, 2008

NaPoWriMo 2008

It’s (Inter-)National Poetry Writing Month, otherwise known as NaPoWriMo. The idea is to write a poem on every day of April. I’ve done it three years running, but this year I’ve decided to challenge myself to write a single poem – in around thirty sections - over the thirty days. Given that the longest poem I’ve ever written so far clocks in at about 70 lines, this is unknown territory for me.

Anyway, I’ve started a NaPoWriMo thread for this poem and I’ll add to it each day. I’ll also build an index of links for each day at the beginning of the thread to make it easy to find each daily section. If I run out of steam halfway, I’ll need a new idea quick!

3 comments:

Matt Merritt said...

I'm not going to make it this year, unfortunately, still being tied up with other things. I'll be following it all keenly, though.

Jane Holland said...

How very odd.

I too agreed with Carrie Etter - who's running some kind of 'book' on Facebook for NaPoWriMo (I hate that stupid abbreviation, whoever dreamt it up deserves to be hit over the head repeatedly with the concise Oxford English Dictionary) - that I would write a part of my long poem every day (or poem sequence, not sure how it's going to shape up at the moment) about Warwick Castle, an ambitious project which has been brewing in my head for some four or five months now.

We don't have to show people what we wrote afterwards though, do we? I'll be wanting to keep it all under wraps for now, even if it gets finished this month. There'll be major editing to do, and then I'll want to publish it - or rather parts of it - in magazines.

So, is a poet's word good enough?!

Rob said...

Never mind, Matt. There's always next year.

Jane, no, you don't have to show any of it. The pieces I'm posting are all drafts and I've already made small changes to them! I have an idea of what I'm going to do with the finished product (if I manage to finish it). It could end up as a pamphlet, but there might be another option. I'll have to delete my NaPOWriMo thread at some point after April and revise the whole thing. I enjoy doing it this way though and the fluff comments people make (only fluff is allowed during NaPoWriMo) are oddly energising.