Day Twenty-One

Wow! Three weeks down, and just a week and some change left to go in this year’s National/Global Poetry Writing Month.

Today’s daily featured participant is Hazhapard’s Na/GloPoWriMo, where the response to Day Twenty’s mythic prompt involves a small brown owl. (And here I thought “morpork” was just a part of a silly name the late Sir Terry Pratchett made up for an imaginary city . . . though now I suppose the owl in the coat-of-arms ought to have been a clue).

Our resource for the day is this short essay by the poet Kimiko Hahn on senryu, the haiku’s comic cousin.

And here’s today’s prompt (optional, as always). In her poem, “Names and Nicknames,” Monika Kumar reminisces over various nicknames she has been given, the actual name her mother gave her, and the way both names and nicknames indicate a claim and an intimacy at once. In your poem for today, we challenge you to write your own poem in which you muse on your name and nicknames you’ve been given or, if you like, the name and nicknames for an animal, plant, or place. For example, I’ve always been amused at the fact that red trillium (a rather pretty wildflower that grows in the woods near my house) has several other common names, including the bizarre “stinking benjamin.” The plant grows very short and close to the ground, so I’ve never actually leaned over far enough to get a whiff and see how merited that sobriquet is!

Happy writing!