National Poetry Writing Month

April is National Poetry Writing Month

(Post by Cam)

Today is the first day of National Poetry Writing Month! (NaPoWriMo for short). Are you wondering why there’s possibly an entire month dedicated to writing poems? Where did the idea come from? And again, why?

NaPoWriMo was inspired by its literary sibling, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). NaNoWriMo’s premise is simple: write a novel in one month (yeah, so simple…) In 2003, a poet by the name of Maureen Thorson decided to write daily poems for a whole month and post them to her blog. Within a few years, it was a global poetry writing experiment. The idea is to write 30 poems in 30 days. Maybe you’ll write eight. Fifteen poems. Three. I think the crux is to engage with words and know there’s people around the world doing the same!

Songwriting aside, poetry is the medium I’m overwhelmingly drawn to as a writer. I can’t fully explain why. And that’s okay. Ironically, as a reader I’ve always been drawn to stories more so than poetry. I love plenty of poems, but I don’t constantly seek them out like a good book.

Speaking of engaging stories, I’ve been reading “Dr. Zhivago” by Boris Pasternak. The novel is swallowed up in the devastation of historical events like World War I, the October Revolution of 1917, and the Russian Civil War. It’s a tale of love, of political idealism and disillusionment, of family and national identity and the vitality of art. While reading it the other day, I fell upon this quote that speaks to poetry:

“After two or three stanzas and several images by which he himself was struck, his work took possession of him and he felt the approach of what is called inspiration. At such moments the relation of the forces that determine artistic creation is, as it were, reversed. The dominant thing is no longer the state of mind the artist seeks to express but the language in which they want to express it. Language, the home and receptacle of beauty and meaning, itself begins to think and speak for the artist and turns wholly into music, not in terms of sonority but in terms of the impetuousness and power of its inward flow...like the current of a mighty river polishing stones and turning wheels by its very movement…”

I’m not going to dig in with commentary here. Come to your own conclusions. While I’m sharing excerpts though, there’s one more that I’d like to include. It’s a quote I often return to -- about the act of creation, the ineffable beauty of every individual. Martha Graham, renowned 20th century dancer and choreographer, shared these words:

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open…”

This radical openness, this receptivity, is well and good. But what about the uncertain times we find ourselves in? I want to say a couple things about that:

1. You’ll have days where you sit down to write, to create, and nothing much bubbles to the surface. It’s slow, uneven, directionless, stale, nonexistent...this is completely normal. It happens for me too. I try and tell myself to basically sleep it off, and try again another day. This striving for consistency “keeps the channel open” -- or at least leaves a crack to let some light in. But it’s reliably an ebb and flow. Sometimes I don’t write for weeks.
   
   2. Take care of yourself. 

·       It’s okay if you aren’t producing “great art.” You are enough. 

·       It’s okay if you aren’t creating at all. You are enough. 

·       It’s okay if you don’t write 30 poems in 30 days. You are enough.

·       It’s okay if “all this extra time” doesn’t revolve around writing. You are enough.

The last step before the prompt is sharing some poetry. These are *far* from being representative of, well, anything other than a small collection of poems that I like. I hope you discover something new that you like too.

Brigit Pegeen Kelly - Song
Marina Tsvetaeva - A kiss on the forehead

John Keene - Words
Mary Oliver - The Swan

Terrance Hayes - American Sonnet for my Grandfather’s Lovechild
William Carlos Williams - Danse Russe

June Jordan - It’s Hard to Keep a Clean Shirt Clean

Sylvia Plath - The Moon and the Yew Tree
Tomas Transtromer - The Blue House

Exercise: 

Write a poem about a particular moment in your day. Forget capturing the whole world, the galaxy, the universe. Focus on the specificity, the subjectivity of this moment for you. Here’s the added layer: write this poem in the third person. How do you create a character and some artificial ‘distance’ out of your own immediate experience?