Pondering NaPoWriMo

Pondering NaPoWriMo - a National Poetry Month challenge to write a poem a day in April. I have successfully done it three times now and the experience has always shifted my work in meaningful ways plus given me a great deal of material to work with, even a few poems that are pretty whole, requiring little in the way of revision.

But this April, I will be away at the Small Knits Symposium for 4 days at the end of the month. So the pondering is on how that will affect the poem-a-day goal. Do I start early or finish late? Do I try to write poems during the symposium? That will mean handwritten because I don't intend to take my computer. I will have my iPad which has a MacJournal app (MacJournal is the environment in which I journal and write poetry) though writing on the iPad is cumbersome to me.

Part of my writing process is working on a keyboard. Whether typewriter in the olden days or computer now, I have always noticed a dramatic difference in flow compared to composing poetry in manuscript. I have used that difference, too. The act of handwriting must use different neural pathways or something. There is definitely a difference in the way I connect with my 
imagination.

Found Poetry Project

 

 

This project is just beginning. As I obscure the original words on the page, the lines seem to create the appearance of weaving and I am as interested in exploring and extending the visual effects of textiles as I am in locating the poem hidden in the page of words. 

It was a leap for me to begin to alter the pages of the 107-year-old book I am working with. I did not choose a book that is in poor condition or disbound. No, I chose a book that was just fine.  And doing this to the pages, then tearing them out, seems....like I am breaking a taboo, committing a sin if not a crime. But my bookseller/booklover soul merely winced as I made that first ink mark. It did not cry out in agony, merely winced.

What becomes interesting is the relationship I am developing with the book of essays I am pillaging for parts. Title: From a College Window. And its author. Arthur C. Benson. He seems also to have written fantasy and  supernatural tales as A.C. Benson.  Even the names of the previous owners are part of my thoughts. And a search.  I believe this is the grave of one of them.

It will be interesting to see where this project takes me. It is exhilarating to find something that combines my love of words with visual art that evokes fiber.