#NaPoWriMo 2022 Day Eleven

Grand Canyon

Grand Canyon

Canyon
Giant hole
Cut through bedrock
River wears steady path
Breathtaking

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for our (optional) prompt. Following up on yesterday’s love poem, I have for you another deceptively simple challenge. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem about a very large thing. It could be a mountain or a blue whale or a skyscraper or a planet or the various contenders for the honor of being the Biggest Ball of Twine. Whatever giant thing you choose, I hope this chance to versify in praise of the huge gets your poetic engines humming.

Good afternoon and welcome to day eleven of NaPoWriMo where I write a small poem about a grand object. I’m a little slow today. My right ankle is very sore it started last night and hasn’t seemed to improve with a good night sleep. So this morning my ankle has been occupying a lot of my concentration but I realized the eleventh would be a good day to write an elevenie. Even though it is a small poem (or because it is) word choice makes all the difference. I think I came up with something decent. Thank you for reading my little poem about a very large thing.

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#NaPoWriMo 2021 Day Nineteen

Me and My Dad

Eighty

Birthday
Marks time
Another year older
Additional creaks and groans
Eighty

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And last but not least, our prompt (optional, as always). Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a humorous rant. In this poem, you may excoriate to your heart’s content all the things that get on your nerves. Perhaps it’s people who tailgate when driving, or don’t put the caps back on pens after they use them. Or the raccoons who get into your garbage cans. For inspiration, perhaps you might look to this list of Shakespearean insults. Or, for all of you who grew up on cartoons from the 1980s, perhaps this compendium of Skeletor’s Best Insults might provide some insight.

Good afternoon and welcome to day nineteen of #NaPoWriMo aka my dad’s birthday. So yes I went off script and I wrote an elevenie since my dad is German it made sense. I guess you could read a small rant into the affects of aging. But other than that it’s just a silly little birthday poem. Our new fridge arrived today and reminded me I needed to call my dad. It is preprogrammed; we have yet to personalize it. And this was the home screen.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

After the delivery person left, I grabbed the phone and told my dad, Our fridge reminded me to call you. Once I talked to my dad and we got all the food into the new fridge, I tuned into the poetry pea podcast. Today is the 100th episode and Patricia read one of my haiku. I started listening to it on spotify on my iPhone and a notice popped up, we see there is a Samsung speaker near by would you like to listen from it. Umm…no thank you not quite sure I’m ready to listen and watch programs on my refrigerator. Gretchen got up and came into the kitchen and said, Mom’s listening to the weird lady reading haiku again. (Sorry Patricia.) And a couple minutes later Patricia said my name, both Shawn and Gretchen were like…OOO. Really I learned from the last public listening party to keep my poetry listening private unless there is a reason to share.

So this is how my week began. How is everyone else doing?

#NaPoWriMo 2021 Day Six

Anchored

Place
Always there
Filled with family
Where we feel whole
Home

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Finally, here’s our daily (optional) prompt. Our prompt yesterday asked you to take inspiration from another poem, and today’s continues in the same vein. This prompt, which comes from Holly Lyn Walrath, is pretty simple. As she explains it here:

Go to a book you love. Find a short line that strikes you. Make that line the title of your poem. Write a poem inspired by the line. Then, after you’ve finished, change the title completely.

I encourage you to read Walrath’s full post, which has some other ideas for generating new poems based on pre-existing text.

Good afternoon and welcome to day six of #NaPoWriMo. Who here is unaware I love Star Trek? At the beginning of the pandemic I was forced to watch episode seven of Picard a few times so the entire family knew what was going on before continuing the season. It was a huge sacrifice on my part. 😉 Actually according to Gretchen, it is rather cruel of me because it happens to be the episode Hugh dies. But that isn’t my fault. So when asked to find a line in a book I love…

“Ardani. That’s Kelu for home.” p. 316 The Dark Veil James Swallow

And yes, I was busy watching all the First Contact Day videos on startrek.com yesterday. I finished up with yesterday’s prompt at the perfect time to catch most of it live.

Piper Poetry Month

Piper_Center Tweet April 3rd

Words
Create poetry
Dance across page
Connect love and loss
Passion

The @Piper_Center is also running poetry prompts this month and asked for suggestions. Mine was posted yesterday so of course I had to write another poem. There’s something not quite right with line four. I kept fiddling with it but I’m still not satisfied. But April is about writing poetry. If I figure out a better way to express line four I can go back and edit it later. I love short poetry forms because I hunt and peck at the keyboard but when you are forced to be concise word choice really matters.

Well I’m off to check @LiminalSpaceBot for a photo for the #NaPoWriMo prompt then it’s off to celebrate someone’s 20th! birthday.

#NaPoWriMo – Backyard View

Fort
Air Castle
Corner of mind
Place to escape reality
Solitude

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Martha Dickinson Bianchi’s description of her aunt’s cozy room, scented with hyacinths and a crackling stove, warmly recalls the setting decades later. Describe a bedroom from your past in a series of descriptive paragraphs or a poem. It could be your childhood room, your grandmother’s room, a college dormitory or another significant space from your life.

Good afternoon and welcome to day twenty-eight of napowrimo. Shawn had the computer this morning, working on Robin’s graduation photos. So I was out in the backyard enjoying the fresh air before the heat of the day hits. Now that Shawn has a black shade cover over the sitting area, it reminded me of the forts we used to build in the woods behind our house. We used to have a lot of fun going back there and playing make believe. I thought we could all use an escape from reality right now. This poem was the end result. It’s not exactly to prompt, but it was a nice daydream to have this morning.

#NaPoWriMo Elevenie Bonus

Potter
spins wheel
in her backyard
molding clay into shape
Artistry

Good afternoon readers. I thought I would write an extra poem today featuring Gretchen at the potter’s wheel since I wrote about having a wheel in our backyard yesterday. I should be prepping vegetables to go into the chicken soup on the stove, but I’m procrastinating with poetry.

#NaPoWriMo Homophonic Translation

Trip to Germany 2017

als ich einschlief in seinem weißen Rauschen, blieb ich
innerlich hell, ein nur spaltbreit geöffneter Kühlschrank, mechanisch
vibrierende Schwanenbarke. sie schwamm mit dem trügerischen,
dem Traummaterial im ***-Fach durch den Eiskranz der Nacht,
durch die Abtauflüssigkeit, faules Gemüse, den abgestandenen
Teichgeruch.
Poet’s Lot By: Marion Poschmann

As I engulfed in sign way been rushing bulb I
enter like hell and near splat brat get together call shrank mechanic
vibrant swan bark see swim mitt and triggers
and traumatic I’m fast dirt in risqué for naught
dirt die about flossing kite fools amuse and obfuscate
the very rich

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Today’s optional prompt asks you to make use of today’s resource. Find a poem in a language that you don’t know, and perform a “homophonic translation” on it. What does that mean? Well, it means to try to translate the poem simply based on how it sounds. You may not wind up with a credible poem at the end, but this can be a fun way to step outside of your own mind for a bit, and develop a poem that speaks in a distinctive voice.

Good morning readers and welcome to day twenty-one of napowrimo. Where you get to see how bad a person with dyslexia works with homophones. There’s a reason hooked on phonics does not help dyslexic people to read; we cannot break words down into their phonemes. A fact Gretchen found extremely fun in kindergarten and first grade because she did not inherit mom’s dyslexia and she would come home from school and try to teach mom her phonics reading. Meanwhile poor Robin is dyslexic and it took quite some effort on my part to get the school to take him off phonics. Really if you notice a child having difficulty reading and you pull them out of class for extra reading lessons, why are you giving them the same instruction they received in the classroom? It obviously is not working. The reading specialist finally took Robin off phonics and he actually understood what he was being taught and caught up to his grade’s reading level quickly.

Swan
Near splat
Get together call
Fools amuse and obfuscate
Swim

#NaPoWriMo News Article Poem

Comfort Masks

Masks
Give comfort
Wear in public
Stop virus from spreading
Cover

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And speaking of news, today our prompt (optional, of course) is another oldie-but-goodie: a poem based on a news article. Frankly, I understand why you might be avoiding the news lately, but this is a good opportunity to find some “weird” and poetical news stories for inspiration.

Good morning readers and welcome to day seven of NaPoWriMo where I contribute to the mask debate. I saw a story on the news about making and donating comfort masks here in Arizona. One of the drop off locations is in Sun City, close to my mother-in-law (she’s the seamstress not me) so I shared the article with her yesterday. When I read today’s prompt that was the news article I thought of first. And my long time readers should know by now I like short poems. It’s funny to realize my extra tidbits on the daily prompts are the most I’ve typed in quite some time.

Before I go, a link to my niece’s etsy page if anyone is looking to buy comfort masks. And for all my readers who are also participating in NaPoWriMo – Congratulations we have hit the one week mark! Keep writing my friends.

#NaPoWriMo 2018 Day Twenty-Seven

The Hermit

Loner
Seeks knowledge
Climbs great heights
Happy to be invisible
Introspection

NaPoWriMo Prompt – And now for today’s (optional) prompt. Following Lauren Hunter’s practice of relying on tarot cards to generate ideas for poems, we challenge you to pick a card (any card) from this online guide to the tarot, and then to write a poem inspired either by the card or by the images or ideas that are associated with it.

Good evening and welcome to day twenty-seven of #NaPoWriMo and I’m already starting to peter out. Gretchen was home again today and Rachael doesn’t have classes on Friday. Next week is finals and she only has to go in on Thursday! So my peace and quiet is quickly disappearing. I enjoy being a hermit during the school year. Since it is the weekend, I hope to catch up on the prompt I missed yesterday.

#NaPoWriMo 2018 Day Twenty

#RedforEd

Teachers
Walk out
Demand better future
Students deserve higher quality
Education

NaPoWriMo Prompt – Our prompt for the day (optional as always) takes its cue from Notley’s rebelliousness, and asks you to write a poem that involves rebellion in some way. The speaker or subject of the poem could defy a rule or stricture that’s been placed on them, or the poem could begin by obeying a rule and then proceed to break it (for example, a poem that starts out in iambic pentameter, and then breaks into sprawling, unmetered lines). Or if you tend to write funny poems, you could rebel against yourself, and write something serious (or vice versa). Whatever approach you take, your poem hopefully will open a path beyond the standard, hum-drum ruts that every poet sometimes falls into.
Happy writing!

Good morning and welcome to day twenty of #NaPoWriMo two-thirds complete today. And guess what, last night teachers in Arizona voted to walk out; they’re not allowed to strike, but it is pretty much the same thing. The walk out will start on Thursday the 26th, giving the governor a chance to respond. Ducey did promise teachers a 20% pay raise by the 2020 school year. When other people looked at his math they said it wasn’t feasible and even though the governor said he would increase teacher pay without moving or decreasing school support money (support staff, building, bussing, etc) teachers and other school officials have no idea if he’ll hold true to that statement. The teachers know they can’t do their job well without support staff, quality buildings, busses and educational materials. The last month of this school year maybe interesting.