While I was, in July, looking for an old piece of writing, I stumbled across this poem I wrote in the last months of high school. It intrigued me because it’s a villanelle, a poem style I’ve always dreaded being told to write.
And honestly, this one feels decent. It follows relatively well, though I’d say using a narrative in a villanelle isn’t always the best plan due to the structure that demands line repetition.
Why am I posting ancient history? Well, I like poetry but don’t often write it. That’s changing this coming month! I’ve decided to give myself the NaNoPoMo challenge, except that I’ve always hated that acronym and it doesn’t make sense in the first place. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month1 which means the above would be National Novel Poetry Month which… what? Should be NaPoWriMo if anything, right? But this certainly isn’t national, as said month is April, but I’m not waiting that long for two reasons. First, April is my birthday month so I’m going to be doing my regular birthday post and I don’t want to overlap. Second, I don’t want to wait that long. But hey, half the year away works. So I shall begin my SePoWriMo (Self Poetry etc) now!
Here, then, is the goal. For the month of October, regular posts are suspended. Instead, I’ll be putting up one poem a day. Unlike my usual schedule where I plan to have posts queued up beforehand, I want to be writing one poem a day. Not five one day and none for four days. But I also want them to post at regular times. So I’ll be starting today, writing a poem a day and scheduling it to post the next day at 9 Central. If I miss any… well, hopefully I don’t, but if you see a hastily constructed haiku that feels just sloppy, chances are I was rushed… If I do, which I hope I don’t, I’ll post two the following day. The exception being Sundays; I don’t do business writing Sundays or posts here so Saturday poems will post Mondays.
I’ll be using these two websites for ideas for structures but I’m not treating them as a checklist. First off, I really don’t think I’ll be writing a Homerian Epic in a day, and secondly, I want to give myself flexibility. I might use some of the Inktober prompts for inspiration as well. Or I might just pull ideas from the aether (aka random happenings during the day that turn my mind in a particular direction).
As always, these are going to be rough drafts so please don’t laugh at my poems. Unless they’re legitimately funny. 😉
Intellectual Property of Elizabeth Doman
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- I’m told there’s controversy surrounding the official site but I’ve never actually managed to complete the thing and tend to avoid official contests so I haven’t really looked into it. This is, I hope obviously, not associated. ↩︎
