Poetry Month Project, Anyone? #SOL22

Guess what? Friday is April 1st! As the 2022 SOLC comes to an end, National Poetry Month begins and that means the opportunity for another daily writing and sharing challenge.

But something feels different about this year. For the last two years, I was teaching from home. While that was a new challenge for me, I had a bit more time on my hands at this point in both of those years. Now I am back teaching in person, but still adapting to teaching in a pandemic-influenced way. It feels like a lot to commit to another daily writing commitment, but as a teacher of writers and lover of poetry, I’m feeling a tug.

What might my theme be this year? In 2018, my first year participating, I tagged along with poet Amy Ludwig VanDerwater for 1 Subject 30 Ways. My subject? Vernal pools. Then, in 2019, 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 color names, and nail polish colors for inspiration. In 2020, during some of the darkest early days of the pandemic, I dug deep into the journals of Henry David Thoreau and was Thoreauly Inspired, writing a poem inspired by a word or phrase mined from the pages of Thoreau’s jewel-laden journals. Finally, in 2021, my love of birds took flight with Avian Inspirations.

For weeks nothing has inspired me. Where was my Muse? Had she abandoned me? (Channeling Elizabeth Gilbert there!) And then, while walking with my husband yesterday afternoon on one of our favorite trails, she finally spoke to me. (Big Magic!)

A trail marker on a tree and a boardwalk-covered path, two of my most favorite things in the world, revealed themselves in a new light — inspiration. And then today, in case I’d missed them…

…there they were again. I think I’m onto something. Stay tuned!

Thanks for wondering and wandering a bit with me today. And 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.