Today's NaPoWriMo prompt suggests that we simply - relax. Your prompt for today is simply to take a walk. Make notes — mental or otherwise — on what you see on your walk, and incorporate these notes into your poem. My whole day actually included a series of long walks (in intermittent rain), so I …
Haiku/ Day 12
Today, I decided to just settle for a haiku. Haiku is another one of my favourite forms of poetry - deceivingly short and uncomplicated, it is actually never easy to write. Sure, it's not difficult to come up with a bunch of trite 5-7-5 syllable lines, but to somehow fit a whole lyrical world into …
Making up for Lost Wifi – Days 9, 10 and 11
As you may well have imagined, I have been away and - alas! - out of the reach of a decent internet connection. Nevertheless, I got to meet some wonderful people and see some wonderful sights in Cardiff and Tintern, so I can't say I'm sorry for that. Actually, if you ever find yourselves in …
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Ascension/ Day 8
Phew! Long day today. Very long. And not over yet, as I've still much work to do. The day 8 prompt invites us to try writing in ottava rima — an Italian form that, in English, usually takes the form of an eight-line stanza of iambic pentameter, with a rhyme scheme of a-b-a-b-a-b-c-c. I can't …
Thirst/ Day 7
Here we are on day seven of NaPoWriMo - every time I realise a full week has actually gone by, I end up asking myself: where has it all gone to? what do I have to show for it? And I guess NaPoWriMo helps to make me feel slightly better about myself, because no matter …
Slipstream/ Day 5
Today, the NaPoWriMo participants were challenged to write a cinquain, a form of poetry requiring a stanza of five lines, in which each line consists of, in order, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 2 lines with, again in order, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 1 stresses each. (Phew, that rule was a challenge just to …
“But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I?”
Ah, here it comes then, finally, a proper blog post. Many of you will probably recognise that title quotation as lifted whole out of one of the most famous books in the world, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. That's when Alice, frustrated and confused by so many (rather brusque) changes in height, and puzzled by the anthropomorphic White …
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Offshore Breeze/ Day 4
For the fourth day of NaPoWriMo I decided to have another go at one of my favourite forms of poetry, the triolet (I wrote another triolet for last year's NaPoWriMo as well, here). Why is it one of my favourite forms? I suspect I may have an unhealthy obsession with circularity and repetition in poems... …
Deceit/ NaPoWriMo Day 3
It's day three of NaPoWriMo and I feel like I'm starting to get into this, so today I've completely ignored all prompts and just went with the flow. Spinning poetry out of absolutely nothing sure is a messy business, but then again, what better way to celebrate Spring! [Poem currently under submission.]
Train Ride/ NaPoWriMo Day2
I have had a rather full and stressful day today, I'm afraid, so you must try to understand (and not judge too harshly) if my attempt at poetry for the day has come out slightly...flavourless, in spite of my best efforts. 😦 The NaPoWriMo prompt for today was to write "a poem that tells a lie", …
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