I’ve been so caught up in slicing, Schooling from Home-ing, and just putting one foot in front of the other each morning, that I completely forgot Wednesday is April 1st! As the 2020 SOLC comes to an end, National Poetry Month begins and that means another daily writing and sharing challenge. This time it will be a poem a day!
But what will my theme be this year? Two years ago, my first year participating, it was all things vernal pool-related. I had a blast with that theme, and I’m even retooling some of the poems I created that month so they might be published as a collection. Last year I teamed up with several Poetry Friday pals and we used “Playing with Poetry” as our theme, using tools such as Haiku and Metaphor Dice, magnetic poetry, paint chips, and nail polish colors for inspiration. This was hard, really hard. Much harder than we thought.
It finally came to me last evening in an a-ha moment, if you will. Thoreauly Inspired. Each day during the month of April, I will write a poem inspired by a word or phrase mined from the pages of Henry David Thoreau’s jewel-laden journals. I’ll leave my challenge open in that the poems may take any form (haiku, free verse, borrowed line, blackout) and who knows which direction they will go in. I learned from the first year that wide open is better. I paid the price for not following that guidance last year.
Where did the idea come from? Two places. First, walking. Since our Covid Quarantine began, my husband and I have been taking walks daily, many of which are in Thoreau territory — the towns of Lincoln, Concord, and Sudbury, and along the Assabet, Concord, and Sudbury rivers. (Notice the absence of Walden Pond? It’s mobbed, so we are keeping our distance for now.) And second, volunteering for the nearby Walden Woods Project‘s Thoreau Animal Index Blitz last month. Working with other volunteers, both in person at the Project’s headquarters in Lincoln, Massachusetts and remotely, we combed through the pages of Thoreau’s magnificent journals looking for animal references. This new resource, when tidied up a bit, will be a goldmine of information for Thoreau scholars worldwide.
So there it is. Beginning April 1, #ThoreaulyInspired. We shall see what happens!
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Thanks for wondering and wandering a bit with me today. Many thanks to the crew at Two Writing Teachers, and the extended SOL community, for giving us the time, space, and encouragement to live the writerly life here every Tuesday throughout the year and daily during the month of March. One more day!
This sounds like fun, as you have such a gift with words. At the end of the month, with a theme, you’ll have a book of poetry! 🙂
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I love this idea. Themes help me and inspire me during challenges and I often find nature to be a huge inspiration. Not sure I’m going to commit to another daily challenge next month but I definitely want to do a lot of poetry. Love the idea of Thoreau’s words and maybe even John Muir’s as ‘lift offs’ for poems and see where they might take me. THANKS!
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We were talking about this last night at our writing group meeting. I haven’t decided on anything and may just follow along with others. Thoreauly inspired is a great topic for you. I look forward to reading your daily poems. I find the whole month of April inspiring.
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I was just looking at all my poetry tools from last year and thinking how the two of us were like “What were we thinking?!” LOL!
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I left them all in my classroom. Ha!
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Oh wow! I’ve seen your daily poems in years past and wondered if I should join in!
Hmmmm
Just wanted to let you know Wednesday is April Fools! One less day.
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Oh my. The days are just flowing into each other, aren’t they? I better get moving because you are right I need to be ready Wednesday and not Thursday, LOL! I do hope you’ll join us!
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What a great theme! I am hoping to do better this year, which should be easier with more time at home!
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I love that you give yourself a theme for the poem-a-day challenge. My post–similar to yours–is about just getting started. I poem-a-day with my students…and this year, that means in the remote learning environment! I am going to keep the theme idea in mind…for the future. I know I would want to have my theme be ocean-related–but that would be hard right now with all our beaches closed! Ugh! I look forward to some of your Thoreaulyinspired poems!
Kim
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Enjoyed this lovely post. I’d like to look into this daily poetry challenge, now that I’m living the “writerly life” and so enjoying it. Stay well and keep writing.
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