W&P: NaPoWriMo 2017

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April is National Poetry Writing Month, so instead of NaNoWriMo, you have NaPoWriMo. The idea is to write a poem every day throughout April. The NaPoWrMo website is the brainchild of Maureen Thorson, a poet who lives in Washington, DC.  She started blogging a poem a day in April back in 2003 and she began linking to other writers who followed suit.

To write a poem it is not necessary that the lines of your poems rhyme. You can adhere to a form like the sonnet or the haiku or villanelle but this is not necessary. It is important to have read a couple of form poems before you embark on creating your own. A Petrarchan sonnet, for instance, is different from an Elizabethan sonnet.

It’s one thing rhyming words naturally and quite another to force rhyme. So if rhyming is not your forte, you could write more experimental poems or what is called free verse where the rhyme is more internal and rhythmic for a poem is like a song; the only thing that matters is word rhythm. This is the more popular form of writing poetry today, though it must be said that having a sound idea of the different forms and kinds of rhyme of poetry makes you a better poet.

Where do you get ideas to write poems on a daily basis? There are many sites with poetry prompts, there are prompt generators and then there are the things around you.  Many times the things that matter the most to you will be the fodder of your poetry and prose.

 robin williams society dps poets danielcraigs GIF

Some writing prompt sites for you:

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Mayer-Bernadette_Experiments.html

https://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises

http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/

Watch this video to understand how to write poetry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U00ybFDTRU and watch this one if you have an ear for slam poetry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxGWGohIXiw.

 

 

 

 

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