#NaPoWriMo ~ The Half-way Mark

Half-way through April means it’s half-way through National Poetry Month and thus NaPoWriMo.

I have kept up, more or less. Well, I say more or less – I have written something every single day but some have been somewhat half-hearted efforts.

Take my poem from 13th April for example:

Lament

Poems are like chocolate bars –

Never there when you really need them.

~

Not exactly my finest work ever, but I was tired after a day of fever and sickness and it was about all I could manage to jot down two lines.

I have been using the prompts from NaPoWriMo.net on days where I haven’t been sure where to start and just when I wanted to try something new – they are great for discovering different forms of poetry that I hadn’t previously heard of or tried. Like yesterday’s prompt to write a poem in Persona of a character – I enjoyed trying to capture the essence of one of my favourite book characters in a poem. I was quite pleased with it up until Caius read it and thought I was trying to be artistically racist in the voice of a character – I am using the fact that he didn’t know the character and hadn’t twigged that it was about White and Black magic to stop myself from despairing too much.

I have written a couple of poems I like, though they are only first drafts due to the nature of the challenge. By the end of it I hope I will have a few poems to edit and spruce up to maybe enter into competitions along with some disasters and a couple that aren’t polished but mean something to me.

Like this one from the 12th, which I wrote with my little boy in mind.

Arthur Harry

It’s hard to imagine,

When you’re curled here on my knee,

That not so very long ago you were a tiny newborn babe.

.

It’s hard to imagine,

When you’re clinging to my arm,

That I’ll have to let you go one day.

.

It’s hard to imagine,

When I’m blowing your snotty nose,

That you’ll be a man one day, with children of your own.

.

It’s hard to imagine,

The day your voice will break,

And the day you leave to make your own home.

.

It’s hard to imagine,

So I don’t think I will,

I’ll hold you close whilst you’re still small,

.

And let the future lie.

All Poems ©Carole H Holland 04/2013