After eight years (2016-2023) of taking up the National Poetry Month Challange of writing and sharing one new poem each day, this year I will lie fallow. Why? After all, I have gained an octave of poetry-centric Aprils and twenty dozen–240!–new poems and been able to share them immediately. It has been exciting and truly enjoyable. I expect to return to this poetry-creation marathon next year, in April 2025.

This year, however, I am going to try something with a different shape of spontaneity.

Much as I enjoy the annual April challenge and have gained from it, for me it becomes a full time creative job for thirty days. A marathon. This novennial, I want to keep my creativity flowing, as it has been each day recently, into fiction, and I have realized (over the past two years of working on a long piece of fiction with Tim) that I can’t do both at the same time. This year, with 90,000 words towards a novel, and an upcoming novel-centric research trip scheduled for early August, I want to devote as much time as I can toward completing a (no doubt very rough) first draft without breaking that momentum. Yet, how can one ignore National Poetry Month? I can’t!

So, this year, I am going to share something here each day in April to honor poetry but in a more freeform way than I have before. I might share thoughts about a classic poem I love, or share a poem of my own written outside of the April Challenge context, or a prose passage I find highly poetic, or news about a poetry reading or publication. It is even possible that I will write a new poem during the month!

And, as of now, I plan to return in April 2025 to take on the Poem-a-Day Challenge with new vigor.

As always, thank you for your companionship and good wishes. May poetry enrich your life every month of every year.