there's something holy about poetry month
aka poets go feral 2024
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I have a [brand new] theory that Poetry Month actually alters the arrangement of cells in the body. There is so much creativity bursting forth from the poets, I’m honestly unsure Earth can hold it all within her gravitational pull.
I wanted to offer some of my thoughts, feelings and experiences regarding the writing challenge that some poets [such as myself] have been undertaking this month, which is as follows: write & share a poem every day for the month of April.
Generally, poets will use poetry prompts for this challenge. The relevant hashtags you might find engraved into such posts often sing something to the tune of:
#NaPoWriMo: all-encompassing, stands for national poetry writing month
#escapril: prompts from the lovely Savannah Brown on her page called Escapril
#AmyKayPoemADay: prompts from Amy Kay Poetry, who we adore
#gatherwrites: prompts by the wonderful Maria Giesbrecht, aka theguelphpoet
#sonjaringoprompts: ya girl threw in some of her own prompts this year!
There are plenty of other poets sharing their prompts as well, so your prompt well shall never run dry. It’s been incredibly touching for me to see poets using my prompts for the writing challenge this year!! Like what?? So cool! I read every single one, each day. My heart beams and grows in size exponentially.
My personal NaPoWriMo lore: the first time I ever heard about Poetry Month was through Escapril, due to being a Savannah Brown fangirl for many years. I attempted to complete Escapril for the first time in 2022; I say attempted because I think I wrote maybe 5 or 6 poems that month. To give myself credit, I had just lost a family member and then I moved from a big city to the middle of the woods on April 1st. Shit was super wild in my personal life, you could say - but the seed was planted.
In 2023, I gave Escapril another whirl and this time completed it! It felt incredible to not only finish a challenge of this nature, but also to see/feel my poetry community grow in the way that it did. My online poetry-sharing experience went from solely people I personally knew/had met in my life [family, friends, a high school ex-boyfriend’s great aunt, etc] to a big slew of brand new humans! Brand new to me, anyways. And many of them poets! I also noticed my writing style and voice improved greatly over the course of that month.
Fast forward to 2024 and I’m at it again, but this time I’m incorporating not only Escapril prompts but sprinkling in the ones mentioned above, too. So far, the community’s vibes are LIT, the poets are going off!! Maybe they always were and I just didn’t know about it? Regardless, every morning I wake up and make coffee with a body simply vibrating with creative energy and excitement, ready to devour the day’s prompt. To begin writing and see where it leads me.
Then a whole new wave of joy washes over me as I feast on poems from the many talented poets in my community. The talent out there is unbelievable. The voices are powerful and plenty. An army of soft resilience. I am often floored by the way that poets understand each other.. it is a special thing that cannot be named adequately - to be understood on such a profound and human level. That emoji that’s crying and smiling at the same time.. that’s an actual replica of my face all day every day re: poetry month.
Today is day ten, and it was also the first day of the month where I encountered a writer’s block type of drama in my brain. I really had to coax the poem out and I almost scrapped it entirely. But I didn’t have enough energy to start from scratch, so instead I edited it about 15 times. Still wasn’t in love with it, but posted it anyways. The lesson: show up and write even when inspiration is on her extended lunch break. She isn’t always going to be around, but we must write regardless.
I love working with a new prompt every day because it stirs things into existence that may not have come forth otherwise. For example, so far this month I’ve written about my childhood cockatiel Moe, how it feels to trip on psychedelics, a dystopian corporate job application, a love poem in the format of scientific changing states of matter, a horny/sad poem, and tackled The Internet itself. Here’s the psychedelic one, if you aren’t sick of me yet:
I’ll keep you updated on further happenings and epiphanies as poetry month 2024 continues! I plan to share some spoken-word poems and secret things with my subscribers here, as well as the work of other poets that I enjoy.
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thank you so much for taking the time to read this! <3 you can also find me in these other portals:
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Love everything about this. I chose that exact same picture of letters on a poem I posted back in December…eerie and awesome. (Oops, was gonna link it, but realized I did not properly cite it…must fix! Thanks for being a good influence.) The psychedelic poem…LOVE. The cosmic fungi were the ones who taught me the title of my own poem posted today (everything is everywhere). I have not experienced the squares but would love to pixelate when the time is right. Your mention of frogs and the way poets seem to understand each other (in a way I NEVER knew existed before I delved in)…I mean, it all makes sense. It’s just as you say.
EDIT: Citation has been fixed! https://mikesperiosu.substack.com/p/dear-friends
YOU ARE GLOWING ALSO THAT MIRROR IS SO BEAUTIFUL