Tag Archives: poetic factoid

Day 30 — (M)orpheus + Grief Facts

Always pleased when this month is over (“April is the cruellest month” indeed). That said, I’ve been planning for this poem for a while — ever since the inspiration for it came. A variation on much of this month’s stuff …

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(M)orpheus 

in the last bliss-filled : moments before dawn : i complete a poem : i’m soul-fizzingly pleased with

after days of starts & snatches abstract : unoriginal images & clunky similes i’ve completed  : one beautiful thing to pay tribute : to orpheus & his life-destroying doubt

single-handed walked a difficult path : ploughed through prose : purpled : pumpkin patched : & guided : something delicate & rare to the light 

just as i am about to read    :        over it       :     in a highly gleeful, cork-popping : champagne-guzzling celebratory way

a cockatoo screech of alarm : curses me : & those lines : of poetic perfection : whisper away into ether 

like eurydice’s half-smile

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Day 30 — TIL i learnt 7 Facts About Grief & (may have made up) 1 Myth

7 Facts About Grief & 1 Myth

Fact 
#1: Is normal
#2: Hard work
#3: Unpredictable 
#4: It comes & goes
#5: Always takes longer
#6: The way out is through
#7: Yours is the worst kind

Myth 
#1: People recover 

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!

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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