National Whomp Up Poetry Book Month
Happy Islamic New Year! It's also the 3rd day of the Chinese New Year (year of the dog). Let the world revamp; they say change is painful but I'd like to see some "out and out" changes take place for starts. I want a little vamping.
Today I have been thinking about stories and series and something my brother, Eli, wrote in 2004, When Science And Appliance Meet We All Go Bare:
[The] entry for Douglas Wolk's blog, Lacunae, contained an invitation to its readers to participate in something called "NaSoAlMo:" National Solo Album Month. The idea, in a nutshell, was for readers to write and record an entire LP's worth of music entirely by themselves during the month of November. The album had to be at least 29 minutes long and could contain one cover song.
So I thought, what a neat idea. Why not have a "NaSoAlMo" for poetry as well? After all, what poet wouldn't like the idea of having 28 new pages of work to show case and present to friends, win awards with, get published?
So, since today is the last day of January and tomorrow will be wonderful February, let us set the rules for our NaWUPoBo, National Whomp Up Poetry Book Month:
* The book will be 28 pages long, one poem for each day.
* Like a jazz album, there will be a theme, motif, method to your madness; that is, you might go off on long riffs but you need to come back to the original idea at some point. If you start off on February 1st writing about Mae West's teeth, just make sure on the 28th we have a closing coda bringing us back to where we've been.
* All poetry is welcome. since we are open to all genres, forms and styles.
I imagined this as something we can post daily on our websites, so we can follow the creative developments, but since not everyone has a website and this is open to any and all who want to participate, just keep your poems together and we can email, snail mail or telephone the poetry to each other at the end of the month.
What do you think of this, my friends?