daring

April.  (ahh)

While we're still feeling that crazy not-quite-winter/not-quite-spring weather here in Joisey, the simple change of the date on the calendar brings with it just a little more hope for renewal.

So, isn't it fitting that National Poetry Month is also in April?  As Poets.org say on their NPM FAQ page: "T. S. Eliot wrote, April is the cruelest month. It is our hope that National Poetry Month lessens that effect."  (me too)

I love poetry.  For those who read my irregular musings with any regularity, you know how I do; I look forward to The Dodge Poetry Festival like a little kid looks forward to Santa.  Listening to poetry is a spiritual experience for me; an invitation to the sacred.

And while I write a lot (but clearly, not that often here), I don't identify as a poet.  I'm a prose writing gal pretty straight on down the line, but when I was a kid, I wrote poems like crazy. 

In junior high, my journal was the place I vented in excruciating detail about the crush I had on Randy (or bill or scott or ... whoever the boy of the week was), or how I was annoyed with any one of my they-don't-understand-me family, but poems (and song lyrics) were where I poured my soul without the story.  It was all feeling, all raw emotion and energy. 

I don't know when or why I stopped playing with poetry, but other than the rare stab I've taken over the years in my writing groups, poetry's something I read, hear, and love, but it's not something I do.

Then, in the last several months, I've been feeling a pull to write differently ... a little experimentally; and so I started playing with poems again (might post some if i'm feeling braver). When I was reminded that it was National Poetry Month, I went to Poets.org to see if I could get some ideas and inspiration for this month's writing group.  Almost immediately, I fell in love with this poster image ... and found the question simmering at the back of my mind a lot.  While I was wandering the site, I'd noticed NaPoWriMo.  NaPoWriMo (national poetry writing month) is an offshoot of NPM; and while I've been aware of it for a few years (a few of my blog buds participated in years past) I'd never even considered taking the plunge. 

The idea of NaPoWriMo is to do a full-on poem every day and post it to your blog, and while I'm not open to that much quick-change discipline and universe disturbance at once, I thought I'd venture out on a smaller scale: 140 characters of smaller, to be exact. 

Yep, this month I've committed to a Twitter version of NaPoWriMo - a 140 Twitter poem(ish) every day for the month.  It might be poetry, and it might suck.  (and it might be poetry that sucks ...) But I'm going to play with the structure and see how it goes.

If you dare to disturb the universe just a little, I invite those who Twitter to follow me @uncle_deb; let me know you're playing, and hashtag your bits with #twitterpoetrymonth and lets see if maybe, by months end, one or two of those 140 character poem-ish's inspires a little of that junior high passion. 

And when the month's done, we'll look at the universe, and well see ...

Comments

[Mai Vu or @aMAIzing (Twitter)]

Ooooh, I feel intimidated yet called forth. I have had a writing gremlin that told me that I suck as a writer. And my English is not right. "So WHAT" I finally declared. And reading your blog, there is a nice flow to how you write. I love it. I am called forth to it. Will be following you.

[Sue]

OOOOOOOOH! I love the idea of NaPoWriMo on Twitter. Can we call it TwiNaPoWriMO? Yikes. Well whatever we call it I totally dig it. I will be following and I am in. @suenyoni. Yay. Writing Fairy Godmother strikes again!