Today (Thursday, April 16) I needed a break from the unrelenting frazzlement of the U.S. news cycle, so I popped over to Al Jazeera for headlines from Europe. It was quite refreshing.
Happy National Poetry Month! My daily poems are at Poetrepository here and on Substack here and in IG stories here if you want to follow along. Or just check in here on Fridays for my weekly roundup!
Today is also Inklings Challenge Day. Linda challenged us to write an ars poetica poem, “A poem that explains the ‘art of poetry,’ or a meditation on poetry using the form and techniques of a poem.” I think mine fits best in the second category.
A few phrases in my poem were borrowed from Pádrig Ó Tuama’s 3/29 Poetry Unbound Substack “Belief and Wonder.”
Here’s how the rest of the Inklings met this month’s challenge:
I’ve found my way back into a regular poetry writing routine and simultaneously I might have found my NPM project. As I read the NYT or other assorted news sources, I borrow bits and pieces and write a tricube.
The Poetry Sisters challenge for this month was composing tricubes — poems with three stanzas, three lines in each stanza, and three syllables in each line. At our pep talk/work session last Sunday, we wondered collectively if we would post a single tricube, or if it made sense for them to come in groups of three.
Obviously, I decided on three.
The first was written after I went for a walk about two-thirds of the way through our total snow accumulation. It was magical. So quiet, so peaceful.
The second is not meant to take away from the tragedy of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, but instead as a reminder that we need to guard ourselves from compartmentalizing our outrage and make sure we don’t just mourn the deaths of those who might look like us or love like us.
The third is a memo to myself that joy is a valid form of resistance, as are creativity and self care. There is a time to march, a time to call senators and send emails, a time to sign petitions…and a time to bake bread, mend a shirt, or stitch a memory from last fall’s trip to Norway.
Here’s what the other Poetry Sisters came up with this month:
A(nother) Year of Reading 