The now annual April Poetry Month Challenge has started over at Robert Lee Brewer’s Poetic Asides. Basically, he gives a prompt every day and you churn out a poem. I’ve had several friends do this (and I sort of half did it once, lol)…one of them has had several poems published now. It’s a great way to get a body of poems to work on without a lot of judgment on your part…how much time do you really have to agonize over a poem if you are generating one a day? Plus it’s just a fun community to be a part of. Let me know here if you are doing it…I’m considering it, but I’ve got a Computers in Libraries presentation coming up on the 12th and my creative energy might be tapped out working on it.

In celebration of the UK’s Poetry Society’s 100 anniversary.

I find this tremendously comforting for some reason. Can you imagine the meeting where they decided to do this? “Yes…how about knitting? Everyone loves to knit. We’ll get hundreds of people to knit letters and send them to us and sew them together into a huge poem. Yes, yes, that will work.” Amazing.

For the knitted poem they selected Dylan Thomas’ My Craft or Sullen Art, which you can find in full text or audio at the Poetry Archive, and since I am a librarian, and they’ve gotten all the permissions to post it, I won’t. It’s a declaration of his craft, his role as a poet. Sort of a poetic mission statement. “I write on these spendrift pages …. for the lovers, their arms / Round the griefs of the ages, / Who pay no praise or wages / Nor heed my craft or art.” Art for arts sake.