Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

Welcome, all, to the first day of NaPoWriMo!

Each day during the month of April, we’ll be featuring a participant’s blog, and a prompt. Something new we’ll also be doing this year is featuring a small press or journal every day, with a focus on those presses/journals that have published NaPoWriMo participants. If you have an idea for a magazine or press that we should feature, please let us know at napowrimonet-AT-gmail-DOT-com.

Our featured press for the day is Ravenna Press. Ravenna recently published Crown, by Joanna Penn Cooper, who has been participating in NaPoWriMo for several years. In addition to publishing books, Ravenna also hosts/publishes three different online magazines, Anemone Sidecar, ALBA: a Journal of Short Poetry, and Snow Monkey. If you’ve got a poetry book manuscript that you are hoping to have published, Ravenna sponsors a yearly contest, the Cathlamet Prize for Poetry, and publishes the winning manuscript. In June, Ravenna will begin accepting entries for the 2014 Cathlamet Prize .

Our featured participant for the day is Veronica Hosking, who has been participating in NaPoWriMo since 2010. Welcome back!

And last, but not least, our prompt. Our prompts are, as always, optional. If you have your own plans for generating poems, or find prompts elsewhere that suit you better, that’s just fine. Our prompts are there just to help those who are having trouble getting inspired – if you’re full up on inspiration, there’s no need to follow them. With that out of the way, I’ve chosen something I hope will be fun and simple, to ease you into your first day. Today, I’d like you to go to Reb Livingston’s Bibliomancy Oracle. Clear your mind, push the button, and then write a poem based on the quotation that the oracle provides. Happy writing!