There are online websites and apps I’ve noticed which acknowledge April as National Poetry Month 2024. The dictionary.com app on my phone (which I use quite often) displayed an announcement promoting their support. When I opened the app this morning, I noticed they’ve sponsored a poetry challenge to celebrate National Poetry Month.Image may be NSFW.
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The challenge looks interesting, specifying only two rules which may be fun, but stringent. If you’re someone who enjoys making up new words, this challenge might get your 2-5 line poem published to their challenge webpage! Looks like an excellent way to awaken oneself to a new experimental format.
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When a writer creates a poem, the process varies … depending on the unique nature of any particular poem. There are websites which offer writing prompts to help ignite the thought process of anxious writers going through a dry spell. Normally, I don’t find the writing prompts necessary for myself. I keep a sufficient backlog of works-in-process (WIP) which I sift through (on an almost daily basis).
A week ago, I posted one of my sonnets with the back story of how an ages-old Keats sonnet had inspired me. (I guess you might have called that a prompt.) For me, reading poetry often provides ideas, but I can also become overwhelmed by too many new ideas!
Thinking about my own creative process, the lyrics of an ancient hymn once came to mind. I remembered singing this hymn in church as a child. The song is “When Morning Gilds the Skies,” which (according to my AI-generated search) comes from an old (1773) German hymn, “Beim fruhen Morgenlicht.” Though I don’t read German, the English and German titles are roughly equivalent. (Who am I to doubt the truth of my AI-generated source, right?)
Old hymnbooks can be rich resources for writers seeking inspiration. A look at the English lyrics of this song shows an emphasis of the author’s repeated focus: May Jesus Christ be praised! Through five verses, this one sentence is sung again and again. It is, in my view, a wonderful reminder to me, as well as a helpful prompt for me many months ago as I composed the Englark sonnet below.
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Image may be NSFW.
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