Well, April was a busy month! As well as Easter and the Dark Mountain Writing Weekend, there was the Easter holidays and the spring garden work to contend with. All this, and NaPoWriMo too! Unsurprisingly, I didn’t make a poem a day, but I did manage 24 poems. Most are still in first draft form, and a lot of them are haikus, but still—.
Here they are:
- About to Get Lost
- After Visiting Time
- And So Today
- Anda Union
- April Rain
- Border Fells
- Buzzard Poem(s)
- Change in the Weather
- Chant for a New Start
- Dum Y At
- Grey Mug
- In the Fields
- In the Woods
- King of the Birds
- Land-Chant
- Murmuration
- Nettle Shirt
- Plantation
- Primroses
- Ruined Abbey
- Starling Walk
- The Way We Live Now
- Wind Changing
- Wood Violets
Some of them will probably be combined to form longer pieces, and at least one poem will probably develop into at least two, so the final total may be as few as fourteen, but really, that’s not bad for a busy month! The experience of doing NaPoWriMo has been a very good one, not only providing me with a lot of material to work on, but also a great confidence boost at a time when I was beginning to falter. I think the Dark Mounatin Weekend which I blogged about last time was crucial in this – I came home with the bits for ten poems out of three days! I’ll put up some pieces here, but the longer ones will be saved so I can submit them elsewhere, as even the most limited appearance here can be counted as ‘previous publication.’
Anyway, thank you to the people who organised the whole project, to the poets and family who encouraged me to take part, and especially to Jo Bell, whose prompts were unusual, imaginative and truly inspiring!
