April 2, 2021

  • National Poetry Month & National Poetry Writing Month

    ww39

    A whole lotta years ago I read Mexico City Blues and Pomes All Sizes by Jack Kerouac. For a while, I was into reading his works like Desolation Peak, On the Road, and a few other books that gave insight into the Beat period. I wasn't totally sold on what I read, but I found his poetry accessible. When I wrote The Chiang Mai Sessions and The Bangkok Sessions I had him in mind. When National Poetry Month comes along my first poem is always addressed to him. And every poem is a shadorma, a six-line form that originated in Spain. (Yes, I know he was of French ancestry.) This year was no different.

    So far I have written four poems this month. Three of them use the shadorma pattern while one is a fourteen-line poem, a variation of the sonnet. Shadorma can rhyme if you want to write it that way. It uses a syllable count of 3-5-3-3-7-5.

    I've been using Verse Perfect for Songwriters and Poets by Bryant McGill for several years to write poems and have found it to be a very pleasant piece of software.

    Day Two is about over, leaving 28 days left to reach my goals. I'm going to try to write 60 poems this month. I will experiment with new forms while applying lessons learned using more popular forms, and we will see if I can get another ebook written.

    Let's see what happens next...