I’ve not been as dedicated to NaPoWriMo this year as I was last year, and as a result I’ve written, so far, ten haiku and five poems (one of which was very very long, but still). It’s day 24 and I don’t think I can write nine poems today to catch up, so I’m admitting defeat. However, it was still worth doing - I wrote five poems and ten haiku! I’ll continue to post the inspirational poems at my blog in case anybody is benefitting from them.

Instead this weekend I’m going to try to finish the transplant story I’ve been picking away at for the past two months, and get at least partially caught up on submissions.

Update: I’ve written a seven haiku, and two short-to-medium-length poems, and one two-and-a-half-page poem. Today I’m going to try my hand at a short narrative poem. We set up a tent in the backyard yesterday, a really tall gazebo-like one, and it’s sunny and warm in Nashville, so I’m going to take my laptop outside and enjoy the weather.

New short-form poetry market microcosms has just published one of my scifaiku as their first-ever piece on twitter. What an excellent way to kick off NaPoWriMo! I haven’t started writing yet, but anticipate spending a lot of time tonight trying my hand at more haiku, both with traditional subjects and speculative ones.

Mirrored from joannemerriam.com.

I’m doing NaPoWriMo again this year. Like last year, I’ll be posting NaPoWriMo inspirational poems here and at my blog, and linking to cool prompts at sites like Read Write Poem. I won’t be posting my poems (I want to be able to submit them for publication later) but I’ll be talking about what I’m working on and how my process is going. And I’ll be tweeting to keep my sanity.

I think I probably got a good 15 poems out of NPWM, once all the dust settles and I’ve edited the heck out of them. Thanks, Mary, for suggesting we do it.

In other, perhaps more exciting, news, my poem “Deaths on Other Planets” — which appeared in the April/May 2008 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction — has won their Readers’ Awards for Best Poem of 2008. (You can read it here.)

A new (to me, anyway) wrinkle on the classic writing contest scam has appeared on the Poets & Writers Speakeasy, Absolute Write and craigslist (the craigslist ad was removed by craigslist):

It’s called ‘The Great Publication Contest’ for poems and short stories. By entering the contest you have a 1 in 8 chance of having your poem or short story published in a national publication in a book coming out in the summer of 2010 called ‘A Great Collection of Short Stories and Moving Poetry.

According to posters who visited greatpublicationcontest.siteusa.biz before it disappeared, the “contest” especially targets young people and has a $35 entry fee. In case you’re wondering, it’s not a good idea to enter this contest. For a guide to writing contests, read this, which I wrote when I worked for the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.

Running on very little sleep, so I went into epigraph mode when I saw that today’s prompt was farewell:

Nay, I Have Done, You Get No More Of Me

[pace Drayton]

Why yes, I have been spanked by the doors of rooms
I tried to depart from in a queenly huff:
it happens if you live long enough,
just as ancient dust outstays the newest brooms.

- pld

My thanks to all of you who’ve read my posts this month, and especially to those of you who have taken the time to comment and encourage! It’s back to a more sedate (~ twice-monthly) posting rate for me, but do please stop by from time to time — I’ve some poems-by-other-people to quote and other tidbits to be shared…

Today’s PAD Challenge: make “Never ____” the title of a poem and then write it.

Never Tell a Witch You Haven’t Had Breakfast

For she will not believe you
when you later try to insist
you aren’t hungry at all
while your eyes keep straying
toward the bowl of hot broth
and the glass of sweet tea
and the plate of perfect morsels
all waiting for you to surrender
to the invitation you stumbled into.

- pld

Since Peg mentioned it, I took a stab at a poem inspired by the feast-bowl.

I’m ambivalent about it, although it felt like real writing.

I stayed to play with shells
to float the leaves downstream
to find what dusk means
to an adult. The darkness twists
its hands around me
covering my every breath
with canine step or howl
the sound of wings on air
the air-shake as the tree
beside me shivers with a predator.
The moon comes up
and in the brightness I see home
until the light fills in
with teeth and claw
and opens wider, grinning, hungry,
singing that all children
taste so beautiful in flight, in fear.

More Mongol stories come out as heterometrical lines, opening:

Take this knife.
Your mother might have known a better way,
instructed you in how to please a man,
but I am father third and will not woo again.

I’m still one behind but I am optimistic about tomorrow night.

Late

I want to go home, but I’m not yet done
with either my current can of Coke or the slides
I still plan to hammer into sequence tonight,
but my veins are fuzzy with lack of sleep,
my focus leaking every which where
except upon the topic at hand. Oh, to possess
the command of crystalline logic, the grace
of cut-glass concentration — my task
is neither Sisyphean nor any other
incarnation of impossible, and yet
as daunting as not turning around when told
not to turn around. Behind me are the shards
of shattered piggybanks, the shreds
of a lunatic’s leathers, the specks
of myself — for yes, already
I am crumbling, a tale of salt
trailing away from the very water it sought.

- pld

[Prompted both by PAD challenge - "longing" - and today's words at Read Write Word (thanks, Joanne!). That, and I really do want to head home soon. *wrenches attention back to work*]