Today the prompt could have worked…but I didn’t feel it. Today was the obligatory form poem/anti form poem prompt. He always puts it in. And I have a volume in development for that…but this was the first poem in Ethereal Dreams… I felt like acknowledging that. Each volume is a new mindset. I have to figure out what this chapter of my life is about. Thoughtcicles was about shock and grief for the changes of self and relationship. A lot of frozen thought and self care. I don’t know what ethereal Dreams is yet.
Also we’re a week into November. This is the month for writing… and I think that a lot of people – myself included – see Nanowrimo as a pass or fail thing way too often. It should be about the setting of a routine, not about the word count. If you can hit that word count daily then awesome, congratulations! But if you can’t don’t get discouraged. Set a time for daily writing and meet that every day. Not all writing is novels. Children’s books are a thing. Those require far less word count. Poetry is still writing. Do a poem a day.(that is what I decided to do) Do not measure your own success by the way that other people write. You are going to have a different way of speaking. Writing is another way of using your voice. Don’t let anyone take your voice from you.
My girl Cyndi has taken a indeterminate break due to health from Coffee House Writers. And Tish apparently did not post this week…So I found a couple of other posts that looked interesting by other friends. I like sharing three of us.
Ok. April is likely to be a very busy time. National poetry month usually sees me posting poetry posts on here daily as I do the P. A. D. Challenge. I also plan on doing a daily prompt for the Fae corps Blog. It is also going to be when we are starting a call for submissions on two different anthologies. Fae Dreams… Poetry, art, and short stories with a theme of goals, plans, and dreams. (We recieved one too many submissions for Through the Sunshine and offered a guaranteed spot in this to the author). And Nightmare Whispers, a group of horror stories. This one is a tribute to where we started.
I am working on editing the stories submitted for Through the Sunshine, and compilation of Birchwood Grove Gazette. We are doing the basic edits… Then we give the author time to do their own edits. After we recieve the polished story we finalize the formatting of the final anthology. We have to get it all ready by the middle of May for release in June.
My partner and I discussed delaying Fae Dreams. We may still. I have to see how things go. I don’t know yet how ambitious we are going to be. We have ideas for a thriller themed anthology as well, though the title and cover have not been forthcoming from our muses so far.
I am proud to claim that the above covers are my creations. I think that I am really getting better at this. Keep an eye on the Fae Corps Blog, as that is where any official announcement will be. This is mostly me doing mental meandering.
Today my newest poem on Coffee house Writers posts. The posting rules for Coffee House are slightly different for the poetry department. In the poetry department there are two types, the type I am is devoted to poetry and rarely post else. Coffee House is devoted to growth of their writers. So, the poetry department that I am a part of does a weekly assignment. A challenge if you will. The weeks that you post you are required to at least attempt the assignment, and to comment on other attempts. This way we grow, we learn.
I have written free verse my whole life. I am I think comfortable, overly so sometimes, with free verse. I love the lack of restrictions on my writing.
The poet ee cummings used a lack of following the syntax rules to separate his poetry from the mainstream. I am in no way comparing my poems to his, but it was an argument that I used in high school when the teachers wanted me to follow all of the poetic rules. I have learned the rules since, because it is easier to break rules if you know them. In high school though, I was not worried about the rules of what I was writing. It was a coping mechanism. I was writing pure emotional purge, without care of what I was truly putting into the world. It wasn’t until later, when I was safer, that I started to consider how to improve my words.
So I am thankful now to attempt the challenges to improve. A good many of them are new forms. As poets, we often stagnate in single forms because they become easy to write. (The reason why I have been taking on Haikus lately.) I hate stagnation. Poetry should be fresh. A new view.
This week the assignment was a Ghazal poem.From the internet search “Ghazal (Pronounciation: “guzzle”) Originally an Arabic verse form dealing with loss and romantic love, medieval Persian poets embraced the ghazal, eventually making it their own. Consisting of syntactically and grammatically complete couplets, the form also has an intricate rhyme scheme. Each couplet ends on the same word or phrase (the radif), and is preceded by the couplet’s rhyming word (the qafia, which appears twice in the first couplet). The last couplet includes a proper name, often of the poet’s. In the Persian tradition, each couplet was of the same meter and length, and the subject matter included both erotic longing and religious belief or mysticism. ” I did not follow the rules exactly… Wouldn’t be my poetry if I did. I did however try to get the setup right. Tell me what you think, did I get it close enough?
Pattimouse 