Tag Archives: National Poetry Writing Month

The end of NaPoWriMo and other iso-productivity

01 Friday May 2020

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Yesterday, 30 April 2020, was the last day of NaPoWriMo and I managed to complete my thirty poems in thirty days, as I have in years past. WooHoo!!

I didn’t manage to do a poem every day, there were a couple I missed, but I made them up the next day.

the end text on tissue paper

Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com

Many poems were about isolation and the weirdness that is the global environment at the moment, which I guess isn’t surprising, it takes up a lot of everyone’s brain-space at the moment.

I’ve increased my hours at the day job, working from home of course, and doing rehab for the broken ankle four days a week. And I’ve become obsessed with baking sourdough bread (haven’t we all).

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Sourdough rye/wholemeal bread by me (now that I have got the technique under control)

So keeping myself very busy!

I’ve organised a virtual book launch for my new novel, ‘My Mother’s Secret’, due for release 1 June 2020. I’m still figuring out exactly what a virtual book launch involves, but feel free to come long and join me!

Pre-orders of the book are available on Amazon in e-book and paperback, and other good online book sellers.

Hibernation

27 Monday Apr 2020

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The cold weather is coming
we’re locked in our houses
my brain no longer works
as it should – stuck
a needle on a record
skipping ‘round and ‘round
the same day repeated

 

black and white photo of a card surrounded with flowers

Be creative, that will help pass the time
be disciplined, use the time wisely
but how can I when everything is
broken and dying?

 

The world is faded, grey
an old picture, a flashback
in a movie. Desaturated
technicolour of not seeing friends
lacking human touch, dulled lust
all that remains is blunt hunger
ever present and never satiated.

Florida Man

07 Tuesday Apr 2020

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Wears a ‘F*ck the Police’ shirt to court wins case
Leaves job at Burger King, steals ‘all their nuggets’, because ‘f*ck it’

Spends four hours yelling at people from roof of Wendy’s in underwear
Gets tired of waiting at hospital, steals ambulance, drives home

Suspected of using private plane to draw giant radar penis
Tried to run to Bermuda an inflatable bubble, again

Plans to shoot down Hurricane Irma
Steals neighbours peacock, gets chased by angry birds

Breaks into jail to hang with friends
Ripped urinal from restaurant bathroom, ran away naked into woods

Arrested for eating pancakes in the middle of a crosswalk
Arrested for assaulting girlfriend with fried chicken

Calls 911 to report himself drink driving
Caught trying to smuggle dead alligator in car

Claims he’s the first man ever to vape semen
Should not be left unsupervised.

Inspired by today’s NaPoWriMo prompt.

National Poetry Writing Month

30 Monday Mar 2020

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Now we’re all staying home and not leaving the house for reals, I would like to invite you all to join me doing National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo).

I’ve done it a couple of times before and while some days are harder than others to produce a poem per day, I’ve come out the month with a number of good first drafts. Maureen Thorson, the founder and host, supplies prompts and inspiration for your daily poem.

I’ve been coming up with creative ways to fill my time now I can’t go out for coffee and I’m still not really allowed to walk (I was upgraded to 25% weight-bearing last week which was amazing, we we still have a way to go). I have set myself up with all the materials to paint a mural and I’ve spent a fair amount of time doing semi-intricate nail art projects.

My cover reveal should be ready soon for my upcoming novel, My Mother’s Secret, to be released on 1 June. I’ve done some of the background work and I’m excited to get my third book-baby out there.

Take care of yourselves during this difficult time, keep your mind and body active if you can, keep in touch with friends online, access support when you need it. I’m doing okay financially – my main job can be done from home and TAC is still paying me – but I know a lot of people are struggling with that as well as health and lock-in stress.

Be kind, stay inside, we’ll get through it.

Auckland Airport

16 Thursday May 2019

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Untitled design

I sit, headphones on, but no music playing
I can listen to things around me without attracting attention
The woman next to me on a phone call, the two men across
the way watching some code of football. Rugby I’d guess
based on the city I’m in. Slow revelation of meaning through
poetry has never been my strong suit. I don’t do well at
layering. I tend to put my subtexts into the main text.

If you were teaching my work, it would be easy for the
students. Although perhaps, as Judith Wright said,
I didn’t write that in there. Of course, the postmodernists
don’t care about the author so I suppose what I do
doesn’t really matter

The lighting is dulled, outside it’s dark, but like a casino
they don’t want too much reality seeping into an airport
People with different body clocks, different destinations
different languages, all want to sit, alone, protected from
other passengers by their books/laptops/phones/ear buds

There is half an hour until I head home
away from one family and back to another
I have created a life and a home – a settled little
nest. Friends have flown to create new nests with
new lives and young lives in tow. No one to greet me
at the airport this time, just long-term parking and
the promise of sleep in my very own bed.

NaPoWriMo Wrap-up

02 Thursday May 2019

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I made it through the challenge of NaPoWriMo again for April 2019!

It is always a struggle to feel that my poems are any good when I do this challenge, I seem to churn out so much rubbish, but as with NaNoWriMo, the point is quantity over quality.

I will have to set aside some time to revise and review the poems I’ve written this month, although I did publish one poem here and one poem on a couple of Facebook groups for life modelling. For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here it is:

The art studio

1 convener
5 minders
9 artists
21 models

A room full of nude bodies
Holding perfectly still

The sound of one voice
And scratching on paper

The knowledge that in a few
Minutes we break to eat

Working to create great art
Together sharing our vulnerability

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Seven poses over four hours by a Monash University student (April 2019)

It was written on the last day of the challenge, close to midnight, after a full day of work at the day job, followed by a four hour life-model training session. I am not particularly good at drawing, but the act of performing as a model to be drawn has been something I’ve enjoyed for over five years. 

The Life Models’ Society is having an art competition at the end of the year. I’m helping to organise it and we’re finalising details now but I may even submit a work to the competition. I’ve been thinking about something like a charcoal drawing, perhaps several figures all together, with my poems about life drawing printed on transparency over the top. I think it could look quite good – obviously dependent on the quality of the drawing(s) I manage to produce.

I spent a little less than a week over Easter with my beautiful friend Cathy and her family in New Zealand. It’s been difficult the last few years as a number of my close friends have moved away from Melbourne. It’s not the same as having them here, but knowing I can pop over and visit and have their love and warmth on tap 24 hours a day is a great comfort.

My next projects are going back to some of my incomplete prose manuscripts; I wrote 1500 words in one today despite my procrastination!

Thank you to all my friends, family and supporters – I wouldn’t be here without you, and I hope that I support you in return. Big love.

The Painter

22 Monday Apr 2019

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‘I have done five layers of background
I want to make it twenty,’ she says.
‘What’s the background of?’ I ask.
‘Just colours, like everything I do.’

‘I spent hours on this one
making the background.
I was really pleased with it –
a rich matte black
but then I got drunk when I did
the foreground and now it’s ruined.’

I don’t agree. I think it looks like galaxies or
cells joined together with shining
bridges of silver and ink, but I’m not
the painter so what I think isn’t worth much.

Her works fill her lounge room
vast pieces of converted detritus
‘These are wardrobe doors
I found on the street one time,’ she says.
Now they are covered in
splotches and splashes of riotous
flamboyant colour. They didn’t deserve
to die on the side of the road
as doors, so she saved them.

NaPoWriMo 2019 WIP

19 Friday Apr 2019

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So far I have written eighteen poem as part of NaPoWriMo this year. I wouldn’t necessarily say that they’re all good, but they’re not all bad either. I will probably go back to them later in the year and review them, There’s sure to be a couple that are worth working on.

I had be usual monthly meeting of the poetry group I’m a part of on Wednesday night. I didn’t take any of my new poems, I took one that I started working on in my mind while at a book launch in February.

I promise I was listening and not being distracted by my own inner genius; sorry Chris.

I am not a poet

I am a teller of stories
long and complicated ones
or shorter ones
no less complicated
each person I create
or recreate
from fragments as deep
and complex as I am

I am not literary
I prefer pulp
to dense poetic prose
but I’m a snob
adverb tags
unchecked repetition
trite tropes and
prostrate plots
enrage me

I am not an editor
in my own work
I skim over
obvious errors
I skirt plot holes
with ease
reading others’ work
I find plenty
to fault

I write in a world
between
high and low brow
a place where I
aspire to greatness
but can’t explain
what that means

I will always admire
styles different to
my own
more sophisticated
more practised
more authentic
more colloquial
there will always
be something
to aim for.

And now for some poetry

30 Saturday Mar 2019

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It turns out I work best when I’m working on a deadline, and a month-long challenge is like a deadline every day.

In April I usually participate in National Poetry Writing Month. Modelled on the popular National Novel Writing Month, which I do in November, NaPoWriMo provides prompts and encouragement to help you come up with a poem every day for the month.

I’ve done this challenge a couple of times in the past. Some of the poems are dreadful and I never look at them again, some have excellent potential and are worth working on at a later date.

I have been a bit quiet here on the blog lately; I moved house last week, and into a place I bought! It feels very grown up to have a mortgage. I have a two-bedroom apartment near a park in a very nice Melbourne suburb. It feels very decadent to have a whole bedroom to spare. I may get a housemate down the track, but there’s no hurry.

I hope you’ll join me in the April poetry challenge, it is motivating to know that other people are also participating.

Goals for 2019

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

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Last Friday I went to a workshop that I found through Meetup.com. I frequently attend Meetup events that have highly variable outcomes – some have been really great and positive, like one group for artists which was really positive and motivating for several months. Other times, like a board game night I went to recently can be full of people who make it not fun. But to get back to the point, this workshop was to create a vision board. These are essentially a big seven year plan with pictures. I’d heard of vision boards before, I thought they were mainly nonsense, but it sounded like it might be fun.

When I got there, a room full of women did a meditation and then cut and pasted pictures out from magazines, some of which where twenty years old, onto big coloured cardboard sheets. I’m going to re-do it – either as a list or with pictures from the internet which more closely match what I’m looking for. The magazine pictures were a bit too commercial and a bit too old school for me.

fireworks

Traditionally one of the first things I do in the new year is make up my goals for the next twelve months. Many of my goals remain the same from last year; I’ll do NaNoWriMo again, and NaPoWriMo, as they both generate a good amount of first draft material.

I’m not going to do a fringe show this year, but Alex and I are planning to work on another top-secret project instead. We’re also looking at writing a sitcom and will do a show in 2020.

I have a couple of maybe goals in there too. I have a manuscript that I started last year but abandoned because I couldn’t get the pacing right; I’ll go back to that project to see if it’s salvageable as a short story or novella. I’m also thinking about publishing one of my other back-catalogue manuscripts in the last quarter of the year, but that will depend on how much time and energy I have by then.

My 2019 Goals!

  • Publish ‘Discovery of the Franklins’
  • NaNoWriMo 2019
  • Finish manuscript from NANoWriMo 2018
  • NaPoWriMo 2019
  • Sitcom
  • Top Secret Project
  • Wasted Monday performances
  • Blogging
  • Life Models’ Society Exhibition
  • Life Models’ Society 30th anniversary

Maybe/if I have time:

  • Self-publish one of my other manuscripts
  • Finish/rework shorts story/novella

I’m glad I did the vision boarding workshop. Long term goal setting exercises are important to undertake every so often; it makes me feel less like I’m making things up as I go along. I’ll re-evaluate against the long term and annual goals as I go to make sure my priorities and values haven’t changed along the way (this happens at work all the time!).

I hope you’ve all had a productive, happy, and positive 2018. I wish you all of that for 2019. I’m starting to make my own luck and I’m really loving it.