Thursday, May 07, 2009

My Po Mo

I've been writing nothing but prose recently, and have exams coming up at the end of this month, so poetry has been the poor relation this spring.

It takes me ages to get back into writing poetry after a few months away from the habit. To counteract that effect, I'd rather like to try a month of poems in June or maybe July: writing one poem a day if possible, or every other day if that's too difficult. And posting them up here on Raw Light. I can always delete them after a few days, and just leave the first few lines behind. That's acceptable practice, isn't it?

July would probably be best, as June will be filled with all those things I'm putting off until after my exams. It would be an excellent discipline, I think. Though I'm not sure it will result in any good poems.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I wondered about that too, last year, when I had a go at NaPoMo in April. I lasted about 17 days, but from that I think I got six good poems later on, that were worked upon. I think the more you write the better your writing muscle gets. Nothing like the challenge of filling an empty page, eh?

Rik said...

Go for it, Jane. Even if the exercise produces not a single good poem, it will almost certainly stir up your mind enough for those ideas and concepts you do want to write about (but don't know about yet) to bubble up and introduce themselves.

How about keeping the drafts up on the blog for a week? That way visitors get some text to fluff without feeling overwhelmed by the volume.

Jane Holland said...

It is a good idea, isn't it? I may use it as a way to write more Gawain poems, a project I've rather neglected.

I have twelve or so poems in that sequence already, and could post them up daily to kick the whole thing off, then start composing in order to post.

Rather than decomposing.