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napowrimo prompt #5: make your poetry personal

by the Read Write Poem Staff

We’ve been in the trenches for a few days, and so Mark Stratton says it’s time to get personal! Here’s Mark’s prompt for Day #5:

Make your poetry personal. I mean, it already is, right? It’s thoughts, observations, deep, dark, personal feelings and stories dressed up in pretty words and oblique descriptions. You get it, and some others get it.

Still others see it as something else entirely, which is great, honestly. We have our own set of filters our lives go through, and this influences how we interpret things. It is part of what makes reading poetry fun and interesting for me.

Today, let’s make poetry really personal. Give poetry, as you write it, a name. Possibly a gender. And a personality. A poet I know has written (and continues to write) a series of poems based on this principle, and I shamelessly ripped it off (with permission, of course) and made a poem I called “Sasha.” Sasha is many things, all at the same time, yet all are Sasha/poetry to me.

So it’s your turn. Give poetry — how you view poetry, what poetry means to you, your poetry — a name. Now write a poem suits your view or vision.

Reminders for everyone
Read the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge Kickoff post for details on how the challenge works — and how you can engage with Read Write Poem this month, no matter what your personal writing challenge is for the month of April.

Please read this page to find out how Read Write Poem’s prompt posts work. Remember that work linked from any post this month is shared in precisely that spirit: sharing, as opposed to critiquing. If you haven’t done so already, please read all the pages under About in the navigation bar.

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Posted by Read Write Poem under NaPoWriMo 2010

258 comments to napowrimo #5: make your poetry personal

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