History of National Poetry Writing Month

National Poetry Writing Month (also known as NaPoWriMo) is a creative writing project held annually in April in which participants attempt to write a poem each day for one month. NaPoWriMo coincides with National Poetry Month in the United States of America and Canada.

This website is owned and operated by Maureen Thorson, a poet living in Washington, DC. Inspired by NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month), she started writing a poem a day for the month of April back in 2003, posting the poems on her blog. When other people started writing poems for April and posting them on their own blogs, Maureen linked to them. After a few years, so many people were doing NaPoWriMo that Maureen decided to launch an independent website for the project.

My History with National Poetry Writing Month

I started writing poetry in 1988 after I had been exposed to T.S. Elliot in my honors English class in high school. In 1992 I started reading my poetry publicly at Espresso Europia Coffee Shop in Abilene Tx while I was in the United States Air Force. While living in Rockford Illinois I published my first book of poetry Throwing Yourself at the Ground and Missing in 2007 followed by Postcards From Someone You Don't Know in 2008 Wisdom From the Sack in 2010 and Shaving Crop Circles In My Chest Hair in 2017. You can get copies of all of these books in my merch section. In 2020 I started publishing my podcast version of the challenge and those can be viewed here for 2020 and here for 2021.

What I am doing differently for Poetry Month

For 2023 I am not going to be just writing poems in April, I will be writing poems all year round. Also, since I will be writing all year round, I am using a different source for my prompts. There is a blog called Think Written and you can find it here. I will also be performing these works at Katora Coffee House here in Fredericksburg Virginia on their Friday Night Snaps Open Mic Poetry reading. Some of the podcast episodes you will hear will be a live recording of me reading the poem to a live audience, other times I will be reading it in the comfort of my home studio. I do plan on posting my work to the NaPoWriMo site and interacting with the poets there and see if they want to read their work on this podcast.

Todays Poetry Prompt

I’d like to challenge you to write a poem in the form of a review. But not a review of a book or a movie of a restaurant. Instead, I challenge you to write a poetic review of something that isn’t normally reviewed. For example, your mother-in-law, the moon, or the year you were ten years old. 

2 Stars 

24 April 2023 

Not a big fan of 2020 

I rated that year at zero stars 

If I could have, I would have gone into the negative numbers  

but your system doesn’t allow for that 

Someone is upper management needs to know what happened 

I usually like to give years the benefit of the doubt 

And think about them from a different perspective 

But 2020 was worse than 2016 

And that is saying something 

So I decided that maybe I was being a bit harsh 

 And I gave 2020 1 star in 2021 

There were a lot of lessons learned in that year 

Things seemed to be getting better 

I could find toilet paper everywhere I went 

I am talking 2 ply 

And the ads for bidets didn’t interest me anymore 

Kids were back in school  

The talk of mass extinction was quashed 

And except for that one day in January 

Things were okay, not normal but okay 

In 2022 I kept my 1-star rating of 2020 

Because it seems we still haven’t learned the lessons 

We needed to learn to prevent another 2020 from happening 

And we were 2 years out 

I mean come on folks 

I know some of our family trees don’t fork 

But at least lets really look at what happened  

And not do the same shit all over again 

At some points it looked like we were going to go back 

And then I would have had to go back down to zero stars 

So here we are in 2023 

I have to say I am not recommending 2020 under any circumstances 

However, I am raising my rating to 2 stars 

We got through it, and we are here right now 

A bit smarter 

A bit larger 

And all in the comfort of our homes 

If we are lucky enough to be able to have a stay-at-home job 

We praised the essential workers 

Until the next headline came by 

We praised some of our elected officials 

Until they were found making backdoor deals as usual 

Some of us have even found our true calling 

And left the world of bosses behind 

I don’t plan on shopping here for future years 

Nor can I recommend shopping here for the future 

Look what we are leaving the young with 

The four horsemen on red bull and bottom shelf vodka  

I won’t be here for the hangover that’s coming 

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