After My Month of Poetry - January

Last month was a full on month of poetry, not  just for me, but for many others. Well known
Queensland poet Kathryn Apel called for interested poets to join her for the month of January to be part of her Month of Poetry team.


Many others joined her, and were given the choice of either posting a daily poem, or posting an occasional poem. There were no penalties if one didn't meet the criteria, but I, and I suspect many others, became addicted to meeting the challenge of writing and posting a new poem every day.


The website where this took place was a closed site, and participants were given passwords to get into the relevant part of the site. It was extremely well run, and the poets seemed to thrive there. We were encouraged to not just post our own poem, but to read and comment on the poems of the other poets there. It was in effect an online critique group.


The poets involved were wonderful, some of them very fine poets indeed, and I read some wonderful poetry in the month of January 2012. I've become Facebook friends, and a Twitter follower of a few of the Month of Poetry members, and I hope the connection will continue and strengthen over time.


In December, when I let Kathryn know I was keen on joining this site, I had no idea exactly what I was letting myself in for. I had hoped I'd write some poems and hoped I could manage one a day (challenging!), but I had no idea of the joy and creativity burst that would occur.


I found it was easy to write a poem every day, and I in fact wrote more than the thirty one poems, one a day, that the challenge demanded. I in fact wrote at least one poem every day in January and on some days I wrote more than one poem (I wrote at least 45 poems in January). I was thrilled with that, and I was thrilled with the way my writing for January went beyond the writing of poetry. 


I found more things to write about, and began to post to some of my blogs much more often than usual. This is pleasing to me. I call myself a poet and writer but if I can stick with the increased blog posting, I'll feel comfortable enough to call myself a blogger too. I'm getting more followers on my blogs, especially this blog, so that day is getting closer.


A great side effect of the Month of Poetry for January is the increase in creativity with my various kinds of writing, which is still going on now, after January is over. I hope to keep this up, and continue writing more, and more often. I've written more poems this month than any other month, apart from January 2012, my Month of Poetry. 


So thank you so much to Kathryn and all of the lovely poets who kept me company for January 2012!