Thursday, March 19, 2015

I Heart Poetry and Other Stuff

So it's finally melting, all that god damn snow. I see grass and I also see 20 pounds of anti-skid laying all over my yard. I see my driveway, but there is one last storm coming (damn it better be the last winter storm) on the first day of spring nonetheless. I am hoping the snow will be done  for several months. I am looking forward to warmer days and opening the windows and enjoying the weather.

Did you know April is national  poetry month? I am always saying that I need to write more poetry. I wonder how somebody has enough poems to make even a chapbook. It's not that I don't have a lot of poetry written. For some reason, I might like a poem I wrote  one month then a month later, I don't like it enough to send away. Some I post on here. Some just stay buried on my computer. A couple of months ago, I went through all my poetry on my computer and tried to organize it. Right after my poetry class in school, I wrote several poems that I actually liked so they went in a folder by themselves. Then I made a folder of poetry "I really like" as in stuff I want to send away. There are probably 10 poems in that folder. Not including personalized name poetry and poetry I sell online through my store, there are probably more than 60 poems in the plain old "poetry folder".

Just 60 poems,  but in my life I wrote way more than that. Some of those old poems are long gone.  So how do people write poetry books? By writing poetry every single day. I kid you not, that is the only way to do it. You have to make a commitment to write a poem a day regardless if it sucks or not. Of course, this is the same lesson for all writers, you write everyday.  Yeah I should know this, I am just slow to the party. This year,  I decided to create poetry collages. I cut out pictures and words from travel brochures and then I also created several pages of interesting words and phrases and printed them out. I plan on making a collage once a week so at the end of the year, I will have 52. So far I have been dedicated to the project and I work on  a new collage every week.


This brings us  to POMOSCO.  It stands for Poetry Month Scouts and it is sponsored by the Found Poetry Review. You probably saw me  link to them because I will occasionally write a poem  based on one of their prompts. I had to sign up and agree to write at least 15 poems but you all know me, I love to win so I am going for all 30.  They created 30 different prompts that have something to do with found poetry. For those who don't know what found poetry is, you should probably look it up because honestly, I know very little about it. In general these poems are "found" either in the newspaper, a novel, from another poem, or street signs. There are various ways to find poetry you can cut the words out of a particular book, or use your email,  or whatever the case may be. If you don't know a lot about found poetry, you might think it is easy. Honestly, I thought it was easy too. When I started working on the prompts, I learned something...

It is not as easy as the name implies. I thought I picked something easy to ease my way into found poetry and I spent over an hour composing the poem. So it wasn't easy, but this poem, is one of my better ones. I had to be MORE  creative within the parameters given to me. I completed three prompts and I am quite satisfied with the poems. Found poetry is something kind of new to me, but it is fun and interesting and I am writing some damn good poetry. Yes, we have to credit our sources. You can think of found poetry as sampling other writer's. Sort of like musicians sample other  musicians work.  Found Poetry is unique to the writer. Writing poems like this is more like composing and less writing. It requires more thought.

I am not sure what I am going to do with these poems as of yet. I was thinking making a little chapbook with them.  People love poetry.

Just wanted to mention, that I did go over Moonswallow Gates once again and I fixed many errors. If you have this book, please get the update. Not making excuses but this is how it is, I learned a lot in the last year especially about grammar and what my personal weaknesses are. Now I know what to look for. My writing is always evolving and I thank you for joining me on this journey.

Till next time...

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