NaPoWrimo-ing along...

Every spring in recent years, I vow never again to submit to the temptation to do daily poems for NAPOWRIMO. Every year, I somehow end up doing it. One one hand, the results in the past have been really good. Some of my favorite projects have taken shape in Aprils past. I've finished entire chapbook series and segments of books during this time, as well as started countless others. And lets not forget that my now-daily writing routine found its footing in 2018 during April poem-a-day exploits, pretty much setting off a pattern that has sustained me through many different books and life circumstances, from trying to fit writing around a full-time job to having a little more freedom as a freelancer. With a few exceptions, like in-between project breaks or when working on other things (most recently plays), I show up daily and can usually shake loose at lease a few poems a week that do not suck. Enough to keep those energies flowing at a steady pace. 

On the other hand, despite what you would think, NAPOWRIMO always feels a little lonely. You would think it would be the opposite. A month long celebration of poets and poeting. But really it feels more like a cage, where the lit world can pretend to care about the genre for 30 odd days and then go back to ignoring it the rest of the year. It also feels much bigger and more overwhelming.  Everyone is writing poems, but I feel like it feels, from an author standpoint like you are shouting into a void that seems even larger and more echo-ey than usual. 

What happens is not, as it used to be, that I lose my steam before the end of the month (usually this accompanied a pretty busy apex of the spring semester when I was tethered to academia, or a slowdown in productivity around my birthday, so much so that I sometimes just abandoned the endeavor.) Since 2018, writing daily is a habit that, even if I've taken a small break or wander into other genre, I can settle back into pretty easily. No, this reluctance comes more from the feelings of invisibility and overwhelm. That feeling of floating the surface with a million other bodies, all waving their arms and flinging poems into the sea. I mean, we are always doing this, the sea just becomes more teeming and black in April. 

And yet, I have FOMO. Or I love the idea of NAPOWRIMO if not the reality. April, even outside of being National Poetry Month, always feels especially good for making poems. Despite its cruelty, I'm sure Eliot would agree that in its cruelty, much can grow there. All you have to do is show up... Around the last week of March, I get an itch to do it. This is especially inviting this year since my last two months have been, with the exception of the Bluebeard letter poems, mostly been dedicated to the play scripts or prose-ish things like THE BONE PALACE. Poems are calling me, so how can I not show up. So, yes, I will be drafting daily poems and flinging them into to the sea of April and seeing if anything sticks. Worse case scenario, I grown tired of it. Best case, I get a chunk of poems that I can use in a future book. I will probably be posting them over at IG and Bluesky if you want to follow along...

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