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Blog, News

NaPoWriMo 2011

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While the NaHaiWri Mo 2011, which I thoroughly enjoy and learn from, is continuing for the month of April, I am also joining NaPoWriMo 2011. The challenge, and pledge is to write a poem a day, each single day, for the month of April.

NaPoWriMo, or National Poetry Writing Month, is an annual project. In the words of its founder, Maureen Thorson, NaPoWriMo commenced in 2003, when she decided to take up the challenge (modeled after NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month), and challenged in turn other poets to join her. Since then, she writes, the number of participants grew larger every year, and many writers, organizations, national and international, take part.

Well, phew! What a challenge, though, naturally, the daily poems are, and can only be first drafts. And, cheating a bit, I plan to use some of the haiku, senryu, and micropoems I will be writing for the NaHaiWriMo challenge; or at least versions of them.

Meanwhile, many thanks to Maureen Thorson for her brilliant idea and sustained effort. Indeed, congratulations Maureen!

For simplicity’s sake, I will be using my main blog (on which I post on various other issues) for posting. I will be giving links to other places I home my little ones in. Join me on this journey. Or better still, join the NaPoWriMo and write them yourself!

 

Blog, Haiku

Swallows in La Calebasse

swallows –
coat and gloves
sent to the attic

 

hirondelles –
manteaux et gands
au grenier

 

“Swallows”, the haiku I wrote responding to a prompt in the Facebook NaHaiWriMo, was one of several picked to be featured for March (2011) by Vincent Hoarau in his sparkling site La Calebasse. I am both honoured and delighted – especially since he translated it into French! This is my first haiku translated into French, indeed another language, and I must say I love the sound of it. Thank you, Vincent!

Vincent’s site is well worth visiting. He generously collects and translates other poets’ work, presenting it alongside his own.  His work and collection were recently commended by Melissa Allen of Red Dragonfly, a must-read blog for haiku enthusiasts.

 

(To find my Swallows on La Calebasse, you need to scroll down the page here to find it – towards the end. I hope you will enjoy all the haiku featured there, they are delicious.)

 

Blog, Haiku

haiku #27 March 2011

.
earth report —
besides love, caesium
in water and in the air

.

Following the news on the BBC that “leaking water at reactor 2 has been measured at 1,000 millisieverts/hour – 10 million times higher than when the plant is operating normally.”
.

Blog, Haiku

haiku #11a March 2011

.
white silk kimono
on the shrine floor sake
on cherry blossoms
…

The horrendous violence of nature unfolding in Japan, and its effects on people and ‘things,’ made me wonder how words could reduce it to human scale; make it somehow comprehensible to me.

 

Haiku 11a was an attempt to reduce/freeze the violent, fulminant images I saw on TV to a simple, quiet one: a wedding at the shrine interrupted by the tsunami, the wedding sake spilled, the silk white kimono worn at weddings on the floor…