It's National Poetry Month!

You see me write a lot about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) around here, but NaNoWriMo doesn't start for another 211 days -- what's a writer to do?

Enter National Poetry Month, and you guessed it -- National Poetry Writing Month ( yes -- NaPoWriMo)!

In honor of this momentous occasion, I'd like to share a couple of resources to help get the poetic juices flowing:

1) NaPoWriMo.net offers a 30 poems in 30 days challenge. Much like NaNoWriMo which challenges novelists each November to reach a word count goal in 30 days, NaPoWriMo lists poetry writing prompts on its web-site each day in the month of April. For instance, the prompt for Day 1 was an ekphrastic poem (poem inspired by or about a work of art). This could be something like a sonnet or a haiku or free verse. The prompt for Day 3 (today) is to write a charm – a simple rhyming poem (think nursery rhymes!). You don't have to use the daily prompt -- just write! And when you're all done, if you publish your poems to your blog or web-site, you can share that with NaPoWriMo as well; they also feature Participants' Sites on their web-site.

2) The complete 10-week Poetry for Kids course lays out 10 simple poetry lessons that you can do once per week for 10 weeks or all at once! Some of the lessons:

• Cliche Busting
• Finding Poetry in Song Lyrics
• Poetry Crafts & Games
• Layers of Meaning
• How and where to publish children's poetry

Check them out! And, if you prefer for someone else to lead this journey into the poetic and the rhythmic, let us know -- we have a great class for you -- Poet's Corner!

Now go be brilliant. Come back, and email me your poetry. If I like it, I'll publish it here and on our Facebook Page.