NaPoWriMo – almost there!

I'll actually be kinda sad when this month is over, because while there will be nothing stopping me from continuing to write a poem (almost) every day, I really can't see it happening. It's almost over, and I'm quite pleased and rather surprised that I've actually managed to write almost every day - I think I've missed four days (including yesterday), but I've more than made up for them on other days. I didn't expect to be this diligent.

When I wrote my last update, I was finding it a bit wearying - I was feeling like I was just writing a bunch of unnecessary words, with no real point and no real purpose. I had an inkling that I might get something out of this experiment though, I just didn't know what it might be yet.

I feel like I won't really know until it's all over and I've had a chance to read over what I've written, and have a bit of a think about the whole experience, but late last week something started dawning on me.

Last week was a fairly full-on week for me - a lot of stuff was going on, mostly with people I care about. I had a couple of shocks, and things that really sent me into some soul searching and some feeling and some worry. I have a pretty busy life, what with my full-time day job, my people, and other (often literature-related) commitments, so I don't have an enormous amount of time for writing (this seems to be a common problem), so I've mostly been writing my NaPoWriMo poems in my lunchtimes, which I also have to use for eating lunch and running errands and processing what's going on in my head.

On Friday, while writing a poem, I realised that my poems from last week were about things that really mattered to me, and people who really mattered to me. I was writing directly from my heart, kind of as a way of processing and exploring the things that have been going on - killing two birds with one stone.

I've been coming to terms with the fact that I'm a heart reader - of course I require art and skill and clever images and surprising metaphors and so forth, but what I really want from my art is to be touched, and so it makes sense that I should be mining my heart for my own work. It sounds so simple, to be writing from the heart, but I've been struggling with it, and I'll still struggle with it, for lots of reasons.

Whether the poems are any good remains to be seen, but yesterday I did give one to the person who inspired it, and she said that it articulated things she'd felt, but hadn't had the words to say. I'm feeling pretty pleased about that.

NaPoWriMo, one week (and a bit) in

As I said last week, I was going to do NaPoWriMo this year. And just over a week in, apart from the very first day when I didn't, I've written at least one poem every day.

I was helped by beginning with Easter, where four days off gave me some time to get back into my head and do some writing. I've also been helped by the fact that I'm not doing it publicly, and so told myself I could write whatever crap I felt like, so long as it was a poem, and that it didn't have to be very long. And some of the poems have been rather short, and some of them probably pretty rubbish. But I've written them, every day.

So, I guess what I've been enjoying is the fluency, the feeling that I don't have to wait for inspiration to hit to write poetry, and the feeling of freedom that not requiring it to be deep or even good brings.

That said, while I haven't read over most of the poems yet, I'm feeling resistance to writing stuff that doesn't matter. I'm feeling that it's a bit of a waste of time - there's already a lot of poetry in the world, and the world doesn't need more unnecessary words. I have to say, this has been exacerbated a bit by the fact that I've started reading my way through the JAAM 28 poetry submissions. I don't mean this as a comment on the quality of the submissions - there are some absolute gems already - rather on the sheer volume.

So, it's an interesting tension. I'll keep going for the month, and I'll see at the end if I've gotten much salvageable out of, or if I've gotten something more abstract out of it. Or whether it's just distracting me from properly finishing Cinema (the next book).

NaPoWriMo – can I do it?

I didn’t think that NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month), where you’re supposed to write a poem a day for all of April, was something I’d ever do. I don’t usually like to write on demand, I hate being told what to do, and I tend to have an itchy reaction to rules.

But, it’s been a pretty slow poetry-writing year, and when Emma said she was planning to do it, I had a sudden feeling that that might be just what I needed to give me a bit more of a poetry-writing kick. Knowing my issues with rules, and with an eye to practicality, I know it’s likely that I won’t write a poem every day, and I’ve accepted that most of the ones I write might well be crap, but if I’m thinking about poetry every day, and trying to write something, that can only be good.

In fact, I’ve already broken the rules. April, and NaPoWriMo, began yesterday and I didn’t even think to write a poem. In my defence, it was the end of a busy week, the JAAM deadline was the day before, and I wasn’t feeling very well. But to make up for it, today I’ve written three poems. Or rather three poem-like things. Unlike many other NaPoWriMo participaters, I will not be publishing my fresh new poems on my blog – I’m generally not much of a poem sharer until I’m pretty happy with something, and it usually takes me quite a bit of time before I know whether I’m happy with it or not.

Of course, April is kind of a stupid month for me to be doing this because, as I mentioned earlier, the deadline for JAAM 28 has just passed, which means that Clare and I are going to spend the next wee while elbow deep in submissions for our DanceDanceDance issue. Though, on the plus side, I find that reading other people’s poetry tends to get me into a poetry space, and can send me spinning off into quite random poetry directions. So, am I planning to parasitically use to your submissions to inspire me to write my own poems? Yes, yes I am.