Tag Archives: GloPoWriMo

Day 13 – shadows & the probability of lightning births

I’m really struggling to find Big O’s voice in this project. I’ve tried not writing in first person but it comes off very cold (which I suppose could be good thing) but I always end up flipping it back again. Worse, the words which are coming out are far more banal than the ideas which sound in my head. Frustrating, yes. Unusual, no. 

the shadow of today

one long year ago
i was abruptly evicted
from your world 
for no good reason

no reason at all
really

after foolishly

trying to rescue you
& failing

which i suppose was all
just a half-cocked
attempt to save 
                                    myself 
from insanity’s solitude 

now i am worse 
than i was before

having forgotten 
how to sing

or even — 
why i once did

Day 13 – TIL I learnt about birth & lightning but not maths

the odds of 
— giving birth 
    to a baby 
       at 12:01am
          on January 1 
            are around 
               1 in 526,000*

which is 
     roughly the same 
        as getting struck 
           by lightning

the odds of 
— giving birth 
    to a baby 
       at 12:01am
          on January 1 
              while getting struck 
                 by lightning

involves 
— knowledge of 
      maths way way 
         above my pay grade 

like 276, 676, 000, 000 
   times above it

*less so if you’re a male

Day 1 – detritus/guzzlers

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April is upon me more suddenly than I’d liked & I am throughly unprepared for Na/GloPoWriMo 2023. I’m my least motivated by the thought of writing a poem a day for a month I’ve perhaps ever been, yet I’ve never once seriously considered just not doing it. So the usual things apply. I’ll endeavour to read a volume of poetry every day & write a poem referencing / inspired by some element of the work read. I’ll also check out the various prompts sites to see if I can incorporate/be inspired by them. I find these artificial constraints often produce great results & poems that wouldn’t have germinated otherwise.

I’ll also continuing my themes-based approach to Na/GloPoWriMo, which has worked incredibly well over previous seasons, I’ve decided to work on a long-daydreamed, occasionally-added-to collection/chapbook of poems with the title songs from under earth. So that’s what I’ll be doing as my primary writing task each day.

However, as I will be looking to publish these poems/said collection at some point, I won’t be posting the entirety of each poem on my blog, but a [hopefully] tantalising snippet (many journals/etc refuse to accept poems even if they’ve just been on personal Facebook pages or blogs with only 100 subscribers). As a kind of compensation (& almost respite from the darker thematic nature of sfue) I’ll also be doing a daily (what I’m currently calling poetic factoids at least until a better title presents itself) … which in itself was a prompt from NaPoWriMo.net … that is to say a poem that plays with a fun fact.

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that plays with the idea of a “fun fact.” Your fact could actually be fun – or the whole point could be that it’s not fun. Maybe you have a favorite wacky fact already, but if not, Mental Floss’s “Amazing Fact Generator” is here to help!

*****

Excerpt from detritus — my home wards always wears away

every day the forest’s
a little thinner

& mushrooms munch
the colours of our year

Poetic Factoid #01 — guzzlers

archaeologists claim
we were imbibing beer
before the wheel’s invention

alcoholics argue
this implies drinking & driving
is an evolutionary imper-aperitif