So, here we are, done with day one of April, 2014. No foolin! And for the first time in years I do not have myself committed to a National Poetry Month Challenge.

In years past I attempted the NaPoWriMo gig of writing a poem each day. I ended up with a lot of great starts, and some really turned into good pieces, but I never ever managed to complete 30 poems in one month. I have some amazing poet friends who have, and who are doing it again this year, so I decided I’d leave that challenge to them, and just personally strive to at least be starting something new as frequently as possible. It has been helpful in stirring the creative source waters.

The last couple of years I made my own challenge here to record and post a poem each day. The first year, 2012 was all YouTube and it was a wonderful experience. Thirty Poets in Thirty Days was the challenge, so only one of them was my own. The rest were from Shakespeare to Yeats, Dickinson to Frost, O’Hara to, oh go check out the link and see for yourself!

It did take up, at the very least, when I was hurrying and skimming by, two hours of each day, but more often it took about four hours by the the time I had a recording edited, description posted in YouTube, and written commentary into the blog. So none of my friends or family heard from me that month. Only my work-mates were able to attest to the fact that I was in fact alive and breathing in April of 2012.

But wow, what a learning experience! All the recording and research on the poets and poems, as well as the writing about what I was learning each day, pretty much amounted to a whole semester course on poetry crammed into one month.

Then the next year, 2013 I decided to mix it up just a bit and allow myself to repeat poets if I wanted to, but most importantly for my schedule, I recorded more than half the poems on SoundCloud rather than YouTube. This took a bit less time, as I didn’t have to look pretty, and could sound poetically legit in my Jammies or boxer shorts. Still it was a college course of fun for me in 2013 as well.

This year Poetry Month sort of creeped up on me unexpectedly. I mean, I knew it was coming, but I had some publishing goals for the end of 2013 that I didn’t quite make, due to a death of a loved one, various illnesses in the family, car repairs, and all those things that life throws at you when it’s not paying sufficient attention to your own plans. So I’ve been working hard at catching up on those publishing goals, including the compilation of my first chapbook that I’m entering into a few contests this year.

So I won’t be writing a poem each day, neither will I be recording one each day, but I’ll try to post once a day to give you info on all the cool things that poets across North America are doing this year (apparently it’s a Canada thing too). I may throw in a reblog or three when I find incredible things that my fellow WordPressers are doing for NPM, and I may bring a few flashbacks out, sort of a best-of compilation from previous years, whether they be poems I wrote or poems of others I recorded.

If you are new here you can click on the Links above to look back at the recordings and their companion posts for the last two years, or click here to find the playlists on my YouTube channel and here to listen in on what I’ve been up to on SoundCloud. Those links are also in the footer down below, along with how to find me on social media.

Again, no challenge this year, but I will attempt to post something each day here for National Poetry Month, give or take an hour as I am often sitting down to write here at just around midnight.

So what are you doing for National (ah, go ahead, make it international–March’s World Poetry Day was too short!) Month? Feel free to let me know what you are up to for April in the comments below, whether it be NaPoWriMo or some other crazy fun poetry focus! Happy poeming!