Today’s poem follows on from Lawrence’s maxim from a couple of days ago that it’s better to reread one book six times than six books once. Part of this month’s plan is I’d like to try & get a set of (at least 6) seminal books that’ve played an influential part in my reading journey. This is the first I’ve written (this month at least; drafts of others have been begun previously).
The legacy of this book is I love reading (now) mostly non-fiction/memoir style books of the natural world. A year in the fens, the life cycle of a wood, birdwatchingwatching, etc etc. Those type of books. Note: I’ve played with the layout so you’ll need to click on the image to enlarge the get the full effect.
Today’s poetic factoid was learnt when typing in the term “Australia’s fiercest animal”
Day 5 Factoid – fierce Australian animals
Swooper-dooper
when asked : our fiercest creature most Aussies would say : it’s neither crocodile nor shark : koala nor cassowary
rather the common magpie who transforms : from harmless hippie collective : singing hymns round your house : to rabid riots of rage
to be fair : during spring’s hormonal madness : male magpie’s testicles enlarge up to 300%
April. Again. Therefore Na/GloPoWriMo 2025. It felt like it arrived with a rush. Today has been a week packed into a day already. But I’m looking forward to this year because …
As in previous years I’m adopting a themes-based approach to Na/GloPoWriMo. And this year it’s something I should, by all rights, love doing since I’ve picked a theme I love, well, doing. My task is to write a reading or book-inspired poem every day. Happy is the man who makes his vocation his vacation & all that. Well, there we go. I’ve already written over a dozen reading/book inspired poems at intermittent stages in my life. So let’s make it official & see if we can get a chapbook out of it.
So the grist for this year’s mill will include: books, book memories, stories about books, lists of books, face books, book is revist often & some I’ve ben too scared too), fave reading quotes & fave book quotes (yes I keep a file of such things), book facts & reading stats, book covers, libraries, lending books, dream house plans which is basically any house with enough rooms to use 40 of them as libraries, book collecting, shopping for books, buying books, quirky topics I collect books on, disputes with parents on the number I books I own, and so on.
As previously II, since the project I have in mind may depend on the poems not being made public prior to their appearance I won’t necessarily be posting the entirety of each poem on my blog, but sometimes a [hopefully] tantalising snippet (many journals/comps/etc refuse to accept poems even if they’ve only been on personal Facebook pages or blogs with minimal subscribers).
As a wonderful compensation for skimpy serious verse, I’ll be repeating my daily Poetic Factoid poem assignment from previous years — which if I’m honest — can produce better poems than the main event. Hahaha!
Day 1 – reading: act I
first memory reading hand written words on pieces of paper kept in toy box at grandparents’ house sitting beneath dining room table under which we’d eat Christmas dinners for decades shuffling words into simple sentences
— both acts forever imbued with everlasting magic
*****
Factoid 1 – first known author
not Gilgamesh again
google tricked me today by answering who wrote the first book not with the anticipated response the unknown author of Gilgamesh but Enheduanna — a Mesopotamian high priestess of the moon (of course she is) her name means “Ornament of Heaven” author of 42 temple hymns, the myth of Inanna & Ebih & 2 hymns to the love goddess all composed three centuries prior to the Epic & her name is known — despite the anonymity of her contemporary poets’ works all of which pleases me greatly (aside from being forgotten today) but nothing more than when — at the end of one hymn she bitches about how difficult the creative process is
gareth roi poet boi 