NaPoWrimo begins next Tuesday! Here on the east coast of the United States, at least, spring has been slow in coming. But neither time nor tide (nor a foot of snow) can keep NaPoWriMo from happening.

Thanks to everyone who has sent in ideas for prompts and featured magazines/presses. Keep ‘em coming! It’s wonderful to learn about all the different places that Na-Poets have had their work published, and a good reminder that even if the poems you write during NaPoWriMo are just unfinished drafts, they may lead to work that will be published in a magazine, or even form part of a book.

For the next week, I’ll be posting a little count-down to NaPoWriMo. In the meantime, here’s a little reminder that you can follow along with NaPoWriMo via twitter and on Facebook – check out @napowrimo2014, and the NaPoWriMo facebook page.

Hello, all. It’s just two weeks until NaPoWriMo starts. I hope you are beginning to feel inspired! Thanks to everyone who has sent in ideas for prompts. I’d also like your help with something else. Last year, I featured a different poetry-themed website each day, mostly blogs that offer book reviews. This year, I’d like to feature small presses and magazines, specifically those who have published NaPoWriMo-ers. Whether you’ve participated in NaPoWriMo for years, or are doing it for the first time, if you’ve had a poem, chapbook, pamphlet or book published (or soon to come out), I’d love to know the magazine/press. Just write me at napowrimonet-AT-gmail-DOT-com.

Hello, all. It’s just three weeks until NaPoWriMo! Sign-ups are open, and we already have people stepping forth to declare their intentions to write 30 poems over the month of April.

Just like last year, I will be posting optional prompts every day during April. I’ve been brainstorming prompts all year, trying my best not to repeat prompts from last year, or the year before. But I would love your help! If you have an idea for a prompt, please email me at napowrimonet-AT-gmail-DOT-com. Suggesters of all used prompts will get a shout-out on the site, as well as the warm fuzzy glow that happens every time you help to usher a poem or two into existence.

Interested in a NaPoWriMo button for your blog or website? I’ve made these two:

or you might consider this fine set of buttons made by Ivy Alvarez back in 2007. She even has an IntPoWriMo button.

Hello, all! It’s that time of year again — time to start thinking about NaPoWriMo, and the prospect of writing a poem a day for the day of April! Sign-ups are now open — last year we had more than 2500 participants! I hope that we’ll be able to break that record this year.

We’ve done a little bit of housekeeping work on the site — most importantly, we’ve added a search feature to the participants’ list, so that you can search for sites by name. We’re also upgrading our commenting system — please bear with us as we work out the kinks in that during the run-up to April.

If you’d like to follow along with NaPoWriMo-related posts on Twitter, check out @napowrimo2014. You can also follow along on Facebook.

Another NaPoWriMo has come and gone! My thanks to everyone who participated, and a special shout-out to those of you who met the challenge and wrote 30 poems. If you didn’t quite make it this year, however, don’t worry — there’s always next time.

Thanks also to everyone who wrote in with comments and suggestions for the website. I hope to implement several improvements for next year. In the meantime, all sites, posts, and comments will be left up for at least a month or two. Thanks again, everyone, and I hope you had fun!

Hello, all! It’s the final day of NaPoWriMo 2013. Thank you all for participating — this has been the biggest year yet. More than 2000 people signed up!

Our poetry-related link for the day is to Lemonhound, where you’ll find essays and reviews on poetry and poetics, as well as new poems by contemporary poets.

Our featured participant’s blog for the day is Joanna Penn Cooper. Her poems have a serious levity to them — a sort of humorous gravity. Is that a contradiction? Maybe, but take a look and perhaps you’ll see what I mean.

And now our final (and still optional) prompt! I know I’ve used this one in prior years, but it’s one of my favorites, so bear with me. Find a shortish poem that you like, and rewrite each line, replacing each word (or as many words as you can) with words that mean the opposite. For example, you might turn “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” to “I won’t contrast you with a winter’s night.” Your first draft of this kind of opposite poem will likely need a little polishing, but this is a fun way to respond to a poem you like, while also learning how that poem’s rhetorical strategies really work. (It’s sort of like taking a radio apart and putting it back together, but for poetry). Happy writing!

Hello, all! Just two days left now. I’m so happy to see how many of you have made it this far!

Our poetry-related link for the day is to htmlgiant, a literary blog that routinely features articles and reviews on new poetry.

Today’s featured participant’s blog is undercaws. The poem for Day 27 was put together from overheard conversation, as discussed in the very interesting process notes. It can be great fun to learn how a poem gets made — and this one is no exception.

And now our (optional, as always) prompt. In honor of the many poets outside of the United States who are participating in NaPoWriMo, Gloria Gonsalves (originally from Tanzania and now living in Germany) has suggested that we try writing poems that contain at least five words in other languages. You could perhaps write a poem that takes place in a foreign country or, like our featured blogger for the day, write a poem based on overheard conversation (inclusive of foreign words). So whether you have to dig deep into what you remember from high-school Spanish, or use a dictionary to translate a few interesting words into other languages, why not drop a Mohrrübe or an asciugamano into your work today (even if it seems de trop. Happy writing!

Hello, all. We’re in the home stretch now — counting today, there’s just three days left in NaPoWriMo.

Our poetry-related link for the day is to Montevidayo, a multi-authored blog that host reviews, conversations, essays, and other evolving conversations on poetry, poetics, art, movies, and the general artistic-poetic condition.

Our featured participant’s site for the day is The Bloof Books blog, where many of the poets published by Bloof Books are posting their NaPoWriMo efforts. You’ll find poems by Shanna Compton, Peter Davis, Kirsten Kaschock, Becca Klaver, Pattie McCarthy, Danielle Pafunda, Catie Rosemurgy, Sandra Simonds, Jared White, and Elisabeth Workman.

And now, the prompt (as always, the prompt is optional). Today, I’d like you to pick a color. How many synonyms are there for your color (e.g., green, chartreuse, olive, veridian)? Is your color associated with a specific mood (e.g., red = passion, rage, blue = hope, truth). Look around the room, take a walk — note everything you see that is your chosen color. Then start writing, using the color as a guide.

If you’re having trouble getting started, here are a few examples of “color” poems — Federico Garcia Lorca’s Romance Sonambulo, e.e. cummings’ All in Green Went My Love Riding, and (a personal favorite) Diane Wakoski’s Blue Monday. Happy writing!

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 27th day of NaPoWriMo!

Our poetry-related link today is to the Lit Pub, which publishes book “recommendations,” rather than book “reviews.” They feature poetry books fairly regularly, and they also publish books, including books of prose poems and lyric essays.

Our participant’s link for the day is grapeling, where all of the poems are joined by one quality — similes and metaphors that really sing.

And now the (optional) prompt! Today, I challenge you to use the wondrous powers of the Internet to help you write, and I have a particular method in mind. Think of a common proverb or phrase — something like “All that glitters is not gold,” or “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Then plug the first three words of the phrase into a search engine. Skim through the first few pages of results, collecting (rather like a poetic magpie) words and phrases that interest you. Then use those words and phrases as the inspirations (and some of the source material) for a new poem. Happy writing!

Hello, everyone! It’s Day 26 of NaPoWriMo. Counting today, we’ve got just five days left!

Our poetry-related link for the day is to THEthe Poetry, where you’ll find all kinds of interviews, poems, reviews, and even poetry comics!

Our featured participant’s link for the day is “that’s mrs. mediocrity to you”. I’m a terrible sleeper myself, so that may be why I so enjoyed the poem for Day 24, “the origins of cave painting.” But these poems in general have a very lovely sense of pacing and sound, as well as a subtle, assured tone.

And now, the (optional) prompt. This one’s a bit tricky, but I’ve used it to good effect in the past — and it’s the sort of thing you can do over and over again. Back in 1977, the poet Ronald Johnson first published RADI OS, an “erasure” of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Basically, Johnson took a copy of Milton’s long poem, and systematically erased whole words and even lines, while maintaining the relative position of the remaining words. You can see a brief excerpt here.

Today, I challenge you to perform an erasure of your own. You don’t need to start with a poem as long as Paradise Lost, of course, but a tolerably long poem is usually needed to furnish enough material so that the final product isn’t just a few words long (though erasure haiku might be a fun new subgenre). A few long poems that might respond well to erasure could be Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, or Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott. Go ahead and copy and paste the text into a document, and then start whiting-out words. Or make a photocopy of a long poem you like, and mark over words on the copy. You can form a whole new poem just by taking words away! Once you’re done, you can leave the spaces as they are (I rather like the “ghosted” look of all that empty space), or take the left-over words and keep playing with them, reforming new poems from them. Happy writing!