April is National Poetry Month. My writer friend, Beverly, and I just finished a month long poem writing marathon. Every morning Robert Lee Brewer, on his Poetic Asides blog, sent a poetry prompt our way and we were to see what we could come up with. We both finished the month with thirty or more poems, but it wasn't as easy as you would think.
On the first day he told us to write a new arrival poem. I racked my brains trying to come up with something. I ended up writing about the new boy in school. The next day was Tuesday, and he always had a Two-for-Tuesday prompt. April 2 prompts were write a bright poem or write a dark poem or write both. I ended up doing both, since I didn't have too much trouble coming up with ideas for them.
Some of the prompts were quite challenging. The tentative poem, the post poem, an infested poem (interesting). The infested poem turned out to be one of my favorites. We had to write a sonnet, a sevenling, a senryu, and a shadorma. These are all form poems and I had fun with them. April 30 was a Tuesday, so we got a two-for: a finished poem or a never finished poem. I wrote about my high school graduation.
The one that stumped me the most was day five. Write a plus poem. I couldn't think of anything so I took out my trusty thesaurus and looked up "plus." One of the synonyms was "lagniappe." Voila! I researched "lagniappe" and found the original meaning: a cheap present, such as parsley or shallots, given to good customers of street criers selling produce. Here's my attempt at a plus poem.
Lagniappe
Black-berrieeees! he sings
I got blackberries
I got greens and cabbages
Come and see
Buy my potat-ohs, lady
Dime a bucket, lady
She comes to the door
Turban on her head
Basket on her arm
He fills it with his wares
On top, a sprig of parsley and a shallot---
For free
If we want to we can send five of our favorites to him for a contest he'll be judging. I got mine off on Friday. Fingers crossed.
