Poster from the League of Canadian Poets for National Poetry Month

English: Wild daffodils at Donnington Wild daffodils beside the footpath across a field to the north of Nurdens Farm, Donnington. Early April (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I love April!  First of all, it’s my birth month, so I always have at least a small celebration to look forward to. And it’s Poetry Month. National Poetry Month, in both Canada and the USA. So there is a lot of focus on poetry this time of year. I know in Ottawa there are numerous readings as well as some fantastic workshops coming up at the Ottawa Public Library. You can read about those in my CAA-NCR weekly listing.

Right now though, I wanted to share a few other links with you, ones that relate to poetry challenges inviting poets to write a poem every day. This is by no means an extensive list. I am sure there are many others. These are the ones  I will be looking at and writing to.

First up is NaPoWriMo, short for National Poetry Writing Month: http://www.napowrimo.net/  which has some fantastic prompts for quite a variety of challenges. It begins officially tomorrow. To participate, you can register your blog, put up your daily poem and that’s it. Or you can simply write a poem to the prompt.

Second comes from Writer’s Digest Poetry Editor, Robert Lee Brewer. For this one you can post your poems online or you can keep them private, then at the end of April select the best per the rules and submit to the contest: http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/2013-april-pad-challenge-guidelines  

Then there is a Found poetry one that I just learned about yesterday. It is restricted to 85 already registered poets, but if you can access the source material, no reason why you can’t follow along and write your own poem. It is based on Pulitzer Prize winners: http://www.pulitzerremix.com/   To see how to write a found poem, if you haven’t done one before, visit the sponsor, The Found Poetry Review for guidelines: http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/category/blog

Another new one is this, just discovered yesterday: http://poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/a-poetry-writing-prompt-a-day/

And an interesting twist on the idea here: Write one poem on April 1st (or start it) and each day revise it. i.e. one poem, 29 revisions.)

http://anexerciseindiscipline.com/

Ok, I am sure there are others out there, and you can always google poem a day challenges for April 2013. Choose the best one that works for you. Or more than one.

One year I attempted three challenges and ended up with 80 or so draft poems. Some good ones too. One I really enjoyed in April 2011 was the Not Without Poetry one, which has not run since but the prompts are still there, starting with Day 30 and working backward. The prompts are so good, I am glad they haven’t yet been taken down.  http://notwithoutpoetry.wordpress.com/ 

So, there you go! Rev up your poetry engines. And drop a line to let me know how you are making out, or share a poem if you wish. Remember, though that some publishers will consider it published if you post online!

Carol

Related articles

• April is National Poetry Month! (bloomingedu.wordpress.com)
• Poetry Challenge for April (anexerciseindiscipline.com)
• AngelHousePress presents NationalPoetryMonth.ca (scorecard.typepad.com)