As I mentioned the other day, until last weekend, I'd done relatively little writing for about a month, mainly because of being extremely busy at work and with the cricket coaching course.
What better way, then, to get the creative juices well and truly flowing again than to commit to writing a (draft) poem a day all the way through April? That's what NaPoWriMo2007, at the excellent Poetry Free For All site is all about. You go there, register, start a thread, post your poems on it, and get all sorts of valuable feedback. And of course, you can read other poets' work and offer them your thoughts.
I've got a couple of ideas for themed sequences I might pursue, but both would involve a certain amount of research first, so if I don't get time to do that, I'll just go with the flow and see what happens.
Thanks go to Rob Mackenzie for pointing me in the direction of this. He reckons that, out of 60 poems he wrote for the 2005 and 2006 events, 22 have eventually been published. I think that's a fantastic success rate, and just goes to show that, whatever the romantic ideal of waiting for the muse to strike, poetry is often about disciplining yourself to get something down on paper. Like anything else, practice makes perfect, although it obviously helps if you've got the sort of ideas and craft that Rob has in the first place.
If you go to his blog, Surroundings, there's also currently all sorts of stuff relating to last week's StAnza poetry festival, well worth catching up on. Its reputation is growing all the time - not surprising when you see the variety of events it involves - so check it out and start making plans for next March.
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