April Is Poetry Month
April brings many opportunities to write a poem-a-day in the company of other like-minded poets. Groups meet online, the cost is free, participation is available to anyone who writes in English anywhere in the world! Having a writing goal, writing everyday by responding to a daily prompt delivered to your computer is one way to improve your writing. It’s how I stopped writing in isolation and connected me to a global network of writers. If you want to launch your writing into the world, participating in one of these projects may be good for you. Positive feedback and encouragement from other writers helps you flourish as a writer. I highly recommend learning and writing in community as a way to grow your craft. Writing is like everything in life - the more you do it, the better you get. As Christopher Merrill, Director of the Iowa Writers Group in the US often says, “Write On!”
The following list includes some online journals and writer groups offering 30-poems-in-30 days during April 2019:
Grilled Cheese - Subscribe at no cost to this online literary journal to participate. Daily writing prompts are posted at the start of each month. New prompts are offered each day of every month of the year. The journal has a flourishing literary community. Here’s a link to the April 2019 Calendar for daily writing prompts: http://www.toasted-cheese.com/a-pen-in-each-hand/march-2019-daily-writing-prompts/ Daily writing prompts are archived in a handy feature titled A Pen in Each Hand.
NaHaiWriMo - Editor Michael Dylan Welch selects a guest haiku writer each month to contribute a daily haiku prompt and the project continues throughout the year. Once you subscribe to the FaceBook Page, daily haiku prompts keep coming. Website page: http://www.nahaiwrimo.com/home/daily-prompts FaceBook page for April 2019, daily prompts provided by Devin Harrison: https://www.facebook.com/NaHaiWriMo
NaPoWriMo - Write 30-poems-in-30-days during April. Maureen Thorson, a poet living in Maine, started this poem-a-day writing project for the month of April in 2003. You can join the global version, called GloPoWriMo, it’s a kindred site. Both versions, Na/GloPoWriMo, share the same website. Daily prompts include links to good poems to read and a video-a-day. Here’s a hot link to Na/GloPoWriMo prompts and discussion: http://www.napowrimo.net
NaNoWriMo Camp - The same group that sponsors writing 1,000-words-a-day-for-a-month on your novel during November now offers a poetry, non-fiction or fiction “camp” version of their word-count-goals for daily writing in the months of April. Link to sign up: https://campnanowrimo.org/dashboard
PADS Challenge - Join a month long poetry party facilitated by Robert Brewer at Writer’s Digest Magazine, Brewer is the magazine’s poetry editor of this worthy magazine for writers of all genres. Look for the Pads Challenge on the magazine’s website under the tab, Editors Blogs, then select, Poetic Asides: https://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides
If you have recommendations for a 30/30 for the month of April, please pass along to: Ingrid Bruck, Network and Resource Editor BTSresource@yahoo.com Between These Shores reader suggestions received will be posted under “Diving for Pearls”!
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Date Published: April 6, 2019