Been so busy...
...since we got back that I'm behind on my April poems again.
About to head to Binghamton for this:
TONIGHT
Thursday, April 17 at 9:00 PM
in Binghamton, NY
Jennifer L. Knox & Shanna Compton read
at Binghamton University
The Belmar Pub
95 Main Street
Sounds like this will be a ton of fun. A few local poets read for 3-5 mins each, then we go on, then a break, then an open mic. Madness, no?
Then after I'm back tomorrow I'm buckling down.
I think this inability to write while roadtripping makes me the opposite of Gabe Gudding.
Labels: NaPoWriMo, random readings
The refractory period of my excitable membrane
Got back home early Friday A.M. Spent most of yesterday zombielike or napping! That drive from Fargo to Milwaukee in sideways rain was a beeyotch, y'all. Pictures, reports, recordings and other goodies
here, with more to come.
But the tour's not actually quite over.
Jen & I go to Binghamton, NY on Thursday.
Danielle comes to Brooklyn on Friday.
And you can catch me reading unpublished, unexpurgated flarf (so, like, the opposite of
For Girls) with the Drew Gardner Flarfestra at the
Flarf Festival on Saturday 4/26 in Manhattan. (Catch the whole festival if you want your poetry nerve singed and tickled. It's gonna RAWK.)
Details
here.Other than getting ready for that stuff, I'm preparing the review copy mailing for
My Zorba and looking forward to starting work on Sandra's book for fall.
I fell behind on NaPoWriMo while on the road, but am hoping to catch up by doing 2 a day for a while.
UPDATE:Three today, so I'm getting there. Gonna keep posting them on the
Bloof blog, because that's what people have linked in their NaPoWriMoBloRos. But since I'm back at my computer they'll be expiring in 24 hrs like previous years.
Labels: bloof, NaPoWriMo, readings
NaPoWriMo begins...
Erm, Happy National Poetry Month to everyone
except Amazon.I'll be posting my daily poems, along with Jennifer L. Knox and Danielle Pafunda, over at the
Bloof blog.We're also going to be posting reading reports, pics, video and audio
from the road, starting tomorrow.
Didi Menendez suggests
another great way to celebrate. I'll try that when I get back. (I can't read in a car, I get motion sickness.)
Anne Boyer's The Romance of Happy Workers is just released today and one of the best books you'll read all year, promise.
See you at
Flarffest.Labels: bloof, DIY blog, NaPoWriMo, recommended
Something to do with your NaPoWriMo poems?
...if they happen to be about Portland, OR...
Powells.com celebrates National Poetry Month with an invitation to write a poem of your own. Before midnight on April 30, 2008, submit an original poem — under 20 lines and in some way about Portland, Oregon — to poetrycontest[at]powells[dot]com for a chance to win 26 books of poetry (from small press poets to contemporary prizewinners to classics) and a handy Powell's rucksack!
One of the prize books being offered is
For Girls (& Others).Entrance info here.Labels: bloof, for girls, NaPoWriMo
Are you ready to NaPoWriMo?
I look forward to
the collective insanity.Even though we'll be on the tour the first 2 weeks of April, I'm still gonna do it.
To make the challenge a little more challenging, I'll be posting my daily poems to the
Bloof Blog and probably also reading them on the tour stops.
Maybe I can talk Jen & Danielle into doing that too?
UPDATE: Jennifer L. Knox is in. Woohoo. (Not sure about D yet.)Click the tag below for some history, etc. Thanks as always, Maureen!
Labels: NaPoWriMo
See you next year
Previous episodes:
Smooth, Or with Very Small Teeth (April 1)
Headless Female Torso (April 2)
The More Lenient Personals (April 3)
Need Anything from Home Depot? (April 4)
Pruning of the Shrubby (April 5, but not posted till the 6th)
If No New Continent or Ice Barrier Intervene (April 6)
Young America, in a Dress Coat at Seventeen, Finds Them All to Be Monstrous Slow (April 7)
Hey Mike (April 11)
To attenuate to or almost to (April 13)
Here's What She Should Do (April 14)
Sunday (April 15)
The Offices of Women (April 16)
Untitled 1 (April 17)
Untitled 2 (April 17)
Begin Here (April 18)
Much, Much Too Late (April 19)
Living on a County Road (April 20)
The Blue One with the Tail (April 21, posted on the 22nd)
Tow Path (April 22)
Hunting Accident (April 23)
Whence All This Delight (April 24, posted on the 25th)
An Occurrence on the Road (April 25)
Gift Economy (April 26)
Won't Stick to Wounds (April 27)
Dear Bread-and-Butter, (April 28, posted on the 29th)
The Debutante (April 30)
___
What is NaPoWriMo?
Historical notes: Maureen has been doing this since 2002, & in some years has even attempted 2 or 3 poems per day! I have been playing along with her since April 2004, when I failed utterly & rather spectacularly to make it through even half the month. (As a poetry editor/publicist at the time, National Poetry Month was too too busy at work, alas.) But I did better in 2005, despite AWP in Vancouver overlapping a bit at the beginning. Last year was the first time I managed 30 poems in 30 days, but I still missed a few in real time & had to play catch up. (That's OK, by my rules, & if I manage it again this time, hooray.) Not all the poems are keepers, but many are, & the rest are recycled or composted. In 2006, Maureen made a tiny chapbook with one poem from a bunch of participants.
How it works here on this blog: NaPoWriMo poems will be published in a single evolving post, each day's new poem will replace the poem from the day before. No archiving, no botnapping.
Other NaPoWriMers:
Maureen Thorson (@ a special blog) & friends
Ivy Alvarez (who offers these cute blog buttons)
Ada Limon & Jennifer L. Knox
Reb Livingston
Jennifer Bartlett
Elisa Gabbert & Kathy Rooney
Jen Tynes
Robin Reagler (not at her usual place)
Michelle Detorie
Sharon Mesmer
Kirsten Kaschock
& a buncha LiveJournalers here, including Tiffany Noonan & Josh Hanson, among others!
Kasey Mohammad (moved 'em to his poem blog)
Mel Nichols (ditto)
Laurel Snyder
Suzanne Frischkorn
Jessica Rowan
Nate Logan
Ian Keenan
Kaya Oakes
Janet Holmes
Mike Young
Anne Haines
Vicky, a.k.a. vmh
Julie Carter
Sandra Beasley
Sarah Bartlett & Chris Tonelli
Michael Gushue
Steve Roberts
Harry Rutherford
Deborah Ager
Michael Schiavo
Nathan Austin
Michelle Fierro
Dax Bayard-Murray
Shafer Hall & John Cotter
Susana Gardner
Elizabeth Hildreth
Cathy Eisenhower
Josh Keiter
Labels: NaPoWriMo
Home stretch
Seeing as how today is the final day of NaPoWriMo, and that I'd have to write 4 poems today to achieve 30 poems in 30 days, I think I can safely predict I'm not quite going to make it.
But close. I'll keep posting one a day till I do--through Wednesday or so.
This year's challenge reminds me, just like the others have, that it's essential to set aside some time for poems to happen. If I wait for them to appear amid other busyness, they come on their own, but if I invite them they often come too, so more often. I always write *something* every day, and read poems almost every day, but you know, that kind of purposeful "I'm going to sit and write a poem now" kind of attention. It's different.
Some of the poems I've written this month are keepers, in the sense that I'll polish them and try to publish them, and others are more like notes toward possible future keepers.
This time around, I found that the daily challenge was not really conducive to working on the "For Girls" series. That's almost finished, and really needs more revisions than new-from-scratch writing, and could use more sustained attention over a couple of weeks to nail down. So I'll go back to that in May.
Anyway, not bad, in all. How'd you do?
Labels: for girls, NaPoWriMo
Whoops.
I've lost track of my NaPoWriMos.
I thought I'd written 9, but can only find 8.
I've got:
Smooth, Or with Very Small Teeth (April 1)
Headless Female Torso (April 2)
The More Lenient Personals (April 3)
Need Anything from Home Depot? (April 4)
Pruning of the Shrubby (April 5, but not posted till the 6th)
If No New Continent or Ice Barrier Intervene (April 6)
Young America, in a Dress Coat at Seventeen, Finds Them All to Be Monstrous Slow (April 7)
Hey Mike (April 11)
I don't remember doing anything else, and if I did, it's lost because I forgot to paste it into the file.
(I don't usually write directly into the computer, but have been with this project because of its on-the-fly nature.)
I must really have missed 4 days. In a row! Where is my head?
I'm going to try to catch up over the weekend.
How are y'all doing?
Labels: NaPoWriMo
Get ready to NaPoWriMo
Tell
Reen if ya wanna play. She did a little chapbook last year with a poem from all the parti-cipants.
I'm gonna play as usual: post a poem/draft a day here, erasing it after 24 hrs. I never ever manage 30/30 but I try. Maybe this year I can?
Only one way to find out.
Labels: NaPoWriMo
Tonight in New Haven . . .
. . . should I survive the train and mythical burger (& really, there's no reason to suspect I won't), I won't quite be reading a "whole new set of wholly new poems," but close.
Been working on revisions to the the "For Girls" poems from April's NaPoWriMo, which have never been performed in their full-bottomed bustleness, as well as some incidental gifts of poems from the ether, and at the other end of the scale will read some unfiltered raw biomass from the notebooks, such as a poem named "Tony Danza."
Which is not to say the "For Girls" series is completed (thanks to Ian). But as it stands, I mean, the girls in a semicircle awaiting their number on their dance cards.
If anybody shows up, that is. If not, we shall sing & mimic our favorite tropical birds. Which could also be fun.
Labels: for girls, NaPoWriMo
For Girls
The series I started during NaPoWriMo keeps going, and going, and . . . it might just make a book, though it's not the one I was
trying to write. The girls apparently have minds of their own. Wonder where they learned to be all uppity like that?
Took them with me over the weekend (along with the Olivetti) to revise some, but didn't. Will bang away at that little aquamarine machine
this weekend.
I say writing the poems in the first place is my favorite part, but I do also really enjoy typing them repeatedly--feeling them with my fingers. It really does help get them polished up.
Labels: for girls, NaPoWriMo
Goodbye, NaPoWriMo!* See you next year!
Fancy logo by Maureen ThorsonWhew! Made it. 30 poems in 30 days, just barely making the last one around 11:30 PM last night.
I think I'll keep going with the series "For Girls." We'll see. Got 17 of those now.
Hoots & hollers for the rest o' y'all, too. I really enjoyed reading along.
*How NaPoWriMo works around here. See Maureen's sidebar here for an ever-expanding list of other NaPoWriMers.Labels: for girls, NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo no mo?
Nah, I just got a little behind. I'm going to try to catch up today, with poems for April 21, 22 & 23.
Labels: NaPoWriMo
Are you ready for NaPoWriMo?
NaPoWriMo is the official unofficial alternative/supplement to National Poetry Month. It's a bunch of people writing poems, one or even two a day all throughout the month of Apil, just because they wanna. There are no rules; there is no membership fee. It starts tomorrow.
Our Mistress of Ceremonies, Maureen Thorson, has gathered a list of particpants
here, if you'd like to follow along. Maureen has been doing this for the last three years, and this year she's upped her quota to 2 poems a day, the old pro! I played in 2004 and 2005, but each year fell shy of a poem a day. However, I still wrote more poems than I usually would, and even spared some of them from the wastebasket. So hooray for failure! This year, I'm determined to do it.
So this is how it will work here on this here blog with my name on top: in a single evolving post, each day's new poem will replace the poem from the day before. (This is only slightly different than my usual 24-hour expiration policy. The practice of disappearing drafts eases my embarrassment over too-raw poems & keeps them from being bot-napped for search-engine caches. Trust me, it's better this way.)
Sure you don't wanna play?
Labels: NaPoWriMo
30 poems in 30 days
April's just a week away. From my desk at the window this morning, I can see the first buds popping at the tippytop of the neighbor's flowering tree. Winter's over. Whew.
So NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month, a completely unofficial celebration unaffiliated with National Poetry Month but coincidentally scheduled) is nigh.
Maureen has been doing a poem-a-day challenge in the month of April for the
last three years, and I have attempted the same for the last two years [my poems have expired]. Shafer likes this game so much he plays it off-and-on year round at his
blog.Usually, I don't quite make a poem a day. I'm s l o w. I get busy or stuck or whatever. But I do write more than I otherwise would, and by the middle of the month the springy-fresh weather combined with the challenge has me going at top intensity, so the failure is actually a success. Sometimes I can keep it up into May.
You up for it? (Tell Reen, and she'll make a list of participants on her blog.)
Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo No Mo
To sum up, even though I did not successfully write a poem each day, I did write more than I would have without Reen's challenge--almost every day, and some kind of attempt every day. At first the pressure of posting my score here served to motivate, but then the idea that you might be watching began to feel like obligation, provoking procrastination. Nobody likes chores. Nevertheless there are a few keepers. So I consider it a success.
Back to the regular way. Hunter-gatherer. Just accrue it. Attention half elsewhere till BING! Then the back and forth with the Olivetti. Madness + method.
Anyway, thanks for playing along.
Shafer, Reen, Sam and sundry others will be reading from their NaPoWriMo notebooks today at
Frequency. FYI.
Also, the book did not go to press last week. Still little correx to make. Maybe tomorrow.
But, I got the AWP 2006 DIY Publishing panel proposal in. So there!
Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo: April 26
[Made you look! Removed for further study and/or wastebin.]
Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo: April 25
[Time's up.]
Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo: April 22
[Still doing them, but the last several have been flabby and tasteless. This week I am a much better cook than a poet. I'm gonna go spice-rub a salmon now.]
Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo: April 19
[Expired.]
Score: 1/2/3/X/5/6/7/8/9/10/X/X/13/14/15/X/X/X/19. Fell off the horse, but back on now. Hi-ya!Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo: April 16
[Expired.]
Score: 1/X/3/X/5/6/7/8/9/10/X/X/13/14/15/16Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo: April 15
[Time's up.]
Score: 1/X/3/X/5/6/7/8/9/10/X/X/13/14/15. A poor flawed rough parody of this...or the first two stanzas at least.Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo: April 14
[expired]
Score: 1/x/3/x/5/6/7/8/9/10/x/x/13/14.Labels: NaPoWriMo
Grab some chalk y'all
Check out
this cool idea for celebrating National Poetry Month (and NaPoWriMo too). Three cheers for this (unidentifiable?) blogger.
Why not grace a sidewalk near you with a chalked poem? Ya got 2 weeks+ left!
Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo: April 13
[I wrote it but it's nothing much.]
Score: 1/X/3/X/5/6/7/8/9/10/X/X/13. $#$% life getting in the way. Missed two more. Ah well. Onward!Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo: April 10
[Time's up. And sorry that was so silly.]
Score: 1/X/3/X/5/6/7/8/9/10Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo: April 9
[Expired.]
Score: 1/X/2/3/X/5/6/7/8/9Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo: April 8
[Expired]
SCORE: 1/X/3/X/5/6/7/8. I think over the weekend I will try to go back and make up those two missed days. This one, like all poems posted here, will expire in 24 hours. A few folks have asked why I dissolve them like that. Two reasons: A) the poems are generally too new (or too bad) for permanent display and B) because some editors would consider them previously published.Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo: April 7
Did it, but don't like it so you can't see it.
Labels: NaPoWriMo
Mo NaPoWriMo
Erica has written a neato
translation of my poem
"Will That Be All, Mrs. Kickboxer" (scroll down) to match the translation I wrote of her poem "letter left unsent" (posted a week and half ago and dissolved after 24h, like all poems here).
We stole this translation idea from Jen & Ada, so there.
Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo is in full swing
Shafer's hosting the blogless players. While you're over there, gander & gawk at all the other NaPoWriMo poems by Shafer, Ada, John, Jaime, Jamison, Jen & even Jaime's chihuahua Costello. Reen's up to great no-goodness too, at
Versatile. And stop by and shake yr stick at more poems than you can shake it at over at the
Connecticut School of Poets by Mssrs. Schiavo (not that one) and Amadon.
Spring has like
so sprung. People are goosing each other in office elevators everywhere.
Labels: NaPoWriMo
NaPoWriMo, day 6/poem 4/post 1
[Expired.]
Labels: NaPoWriMo
I am grateful to find so much to be excited about today.
And if you are not already following Reen Thorson's NaPoWriMo project, dammit,
you should be.Labels: NaPoWriMo
