Hello to all of those coming back, and to those of you joining us for the first time!

Before we get started, a little public service announcement. I’ve had some inquiries from folks trying to find their sites in the ever-growing participants’ list. I’m working on getting a “search” feature built into the site, but in the meantime, the easiest way to find your site is to go to the participants’ list, and use the drop down buttons in the upper left-hand corner to (1) sort the list alphabetically and (2) display all the sites on a single page. At that point, it’s a matter of finding your blog in the giant alphabetical list. A bit inelegant, perhaps, but workable.

And now, our link for the day! The Poetry Foundation maintains about one jillion podcasts relating to poetry, and they’re adding more all the time. You can hear just one poem. You can hear a lecture on a poet. You can hear an interview. I’m particularly fond of the recordings of old readings — I heard one by William Carlos Williams that was Capital-D Delightful. Check out their many podcast series, and maybe download a little something different for your next walk or long car ride.

Our participant’s site for the day is StumbleFumbleGrumble, which is what I do half the time when I get out of bed in the morning. Anyway, the sea shanty for Day 3 is very funny! It seems like a lot of you enjoyed the sea shanty exercise. Hooray!

But now we have a new prompt to deal with! Because I am a rather obvious person at heart, I challenge you to write a cinquain on this, the fifth day of NaPoWriMo. A cinquain is a poem that employs stanzas with five lines. Each line has a certain number of accented or stressed syllables, and a certain number of overall syllables per line. In the “American” cinquain, a form invented by a woman with the highly unfortunate name of Adelaide Crapsey, the number of stresses per line is 1-2-3-4-1, and the number of syllables is 2-4-6-8-2. So the first line would have two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed. The second line would have four syllables, two of which are stressed, and so on. This kind of accent/syllabic verse can be a bit frustrating at first, but it’s useful for learning to sharpen up your language!

Here’s an example to get you going:

Deep Winter

At night
when I drive home
in snow like falling ice,
the crystal air becomes a road
of stars.

— Elizabeth Bodien

Hello, everyone! Welcome to those of you who are joining us for the first time, and for the rest of you, welcome back!

Our featured link for the day is 30xLace, a tumblr curated by Birds of Lace press and Carrie Murphy, where they are posting a new poem every day of April.

Our featured participants’ blog is Mask and Unveiling, where the poems’ use of rhyme is very sensitive and lovely. I also appreciate the photo of the red panda!

Our prompt for today (again — totally optional!) is a little odd, but here goes. Recently, I read an article about the Scottish science fiction writer Iain M. Banks. His books often have spaceships in them. And those spaceships have extremely odd, poetic names. Like:

Prosthetic Conscience

Irregular Apocalypse

Unfortunate Conflict of Interest

Gunboat Diplomat

Very Little Gravitas Indeed

A Series of Unlikely Explanations

Just Another Victim of the Ambient Morality

Jaundiced Outlook

Frank Exchange of Views

Lightly Seared on the Reality Grill

Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints

Abundance of Onslaught

Refreshingly Unconcerned With the Vulgar Exigencies of Veracity

A Fine Disregard For Awkward Facts

There’s a whole twitter account devoted to tweeting Iain-M-Banks-like names for spaceships. So your challenge for today is to write a poem with a title drawn from one of these spaceship names. Feel free to pick a genuine Banks, like the ones listed above, or to take one from the twitter.

And if you think of your own Banks-like spaceship name title, feel free to use that! The poet Barbara Guest wrote an essay warning poets about starting from the title, but while I’ve found that a wonderful poem usually finds its right title, I’ve also found that the right title can easily lead to a wonderful poem!

Happy writing!

Hello all, and welcome back for the third day of NaPoWriMo! If you’re just joining us now, that’s all right too. Just jump in and start writing!

Today’s featured link is to the Academy of American Poets’ tumblr, where they are posting writing advice from a different poet for each day in April. I very much like Elizabeth Robinson’s advice for April 2, in which she encourages poets to start their own magazines, etc. It’s sometimes better to host a party than to sit around waiting for someone else to invite you to one!

Our featured participant’s blog for the day is Seditious Libel, where the poem for Day 2 involves an unlikely emperor.

And now, our prompt (remember — these are optional, so if they don’t inspire you or you have an idea of your own you want to work with, go ahead!). I’m playing to my own strengths here, but I challenge you to write a sea shanty (or shantey, or chanty, or chantey — there’s a good deal of disagreement regarding the spelling!). Anyway, these are poems in the forms of songs, strongly rhymed and rhythmic, that sailors might sing while hauling on ropes and performing other sea-going labors. Probably the two most famous sea shanties are What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor? and Blow the Man Down. And what should your poem be about? Well, I suppose it could be about anything, although some nautical phrases tossed into the chorus would be good for keeping the sea in your shanty. Haul away, boys, haul away!

Hello and welcome back. I hope your first day of NaPoWriMo went swimmingly and that you’re ready for more.

But now, let me draw your attention to a few links. The good folks at wordpress gave us a shout-out on their blog yesterday. Huzzah! And if you’re looking for a little inspiration, I invite you to check out Pulitzer Remix, a project sponsored by the Found Poetry Review, in which 85 different poets are daily creating found poetry remixed from Pulitzer Prize-winning books. Wow!

Our featured blog for today is Right, Write, which brings us a poem for Day 1 that I find rhetorically very compelling, as it moves from the idea of a voice to windows and brings the intimate, inside idea of a voice outside into the world, and vice versa.

And now, the prompt! Today’s prompt is drawn from an idea that Kelsey Howard gave me — that of a poem that tells a lie. I think you could have a poem that’s all lies (that could be very funny — full of things like “the sun is the size of a nickel”) or a poem that steadily builds to telling one big whopper. I can imagine these being very poignant, or very much like goofy shaggy-dog stories. I suppose it all comes down to what you want to lie about!

Hello, all. NaPoWriMo is finally here. Let the writing begin!

Our poetry-related link today is to the Best American Poetry blog, where they are celebrating National Poetry Month with links to — yes! — NaPoWriMo, as well as many other wonderful events that will be happening this month, both online and off.

Our featured blog for the day is Robert Lunday’s Cleaning My Attic. Robert was the first person to sign up for NaPoWriMo this year, so I thought I would point out his blog on this, the first day of NaPoWriMo. Robert also participated in NaPoWriMo last year, and made it to 26 poems, which is pretty darn good.

And now, our prompt! (The prompts are totally optional, by the way — use ’em or ignore ’em as you see fit.) Continuing with the theme of firsts, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that has the same first line as another poem. You can use a favorite poem, pick up a random book of poetry and get a first line that way, or perhaps use one of the following:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

She walks in beauty, like the night

Slowly, silently, now the moon

anyone lived in a pretty how town

I have written some poems of this type in the past, and it can be fun to take a well-known first line and do something totally different with it! But if it’s hard for you to shake the original, maybe using a first line from a random poem would be best for you.

. . . until NaPoWriMo begins! I’ve had a few questions regarding NaPoWriMo blog “buttons,” so I’ve gone ahead and made up a couple:

If neither of these strikes your fancy, you might consider these buttons that Ivy Alvarez made a few years back. She also has an IntPoWriMo button for those of you who want to reflect that fact that you are outside the United States.

The first prompt goes up early tomorrow morning!

Just two days left until NaPoWriMo begins. Are you going to write in the morning or evening? Do you have a theme for your poems? For some people, the regimented approach really works, while others prefer serendipity — writing as each day’s mood strikes them. There’s no “right” way to NaPoWriMo!

Hello, everyone! We’ve just got three days to go until NaPoWriMo starts!

In the meantime, I thought I’d alert you to a couple of links. First, in honor of National Poetry (Writing) Month, the Poetry Foundation is having different poets blog each weekday in April. Check out their site to see new posts from Mary Jo Bang, Bill Berkson, Anthony Madrid, Evie Shockley, and many more!

Second, some of you may know that, in addition to NaPoWriMo, there is NaNoWriMo. The latter is quite the thing — it’s become a full-blown non-profit organization! Anyway, they asked me to write a post for their blog in a bid to convince November Novelists to perhaps try their hand at being April Poets. You can see the post here, and those of you who would like more tools for managing your NaPoWriMo efforts might want to check out their Camp NaNoWriMo site, which allows you to set goals for your writing, track your efforts, and connect with other writers.

Finally, in case you need musical inspiration, I give you Europe’s The Final Countdown.

Next Monday will be the first day of NaPoWriMo. I hope you’re as excited as I am! As I was wandering about the internet, looking for awesome poetry-related things to share with you over the month of April, I came upon the Big Poetry Giveaway, a sort of pay-it-forward poetry jamboree, in which bloggers give away — and get — books of poetry. The giveaway is now in its fourth year, and is being run this year by Susan Rich, a poet, teacher, and essayist living in Seattle, Washington. Stop by Susan’s blog before April 10 to sign up!

We’ve got just ten days until NaPoWriMo! Perhaps you might care to warm up by browsing this list of poetic forms? I’ve been having fun looking at Google images of portraits of poets, myself.

In any event, no matter what gives you inspiration, it’s time to get your poetry thinking caps on!