Category: GloPoWriMo 2019

Hey! We made it.

Not bad at all, no? Apart from infrequent posting, this has been a very creative month. I’ve written a poem properly every single day, but only posted them when I felt like I could take the time to post it. Which isn’t a bad habit. It hasn’t been too terrible, I don’t think.

GloPoWriMo was something I chanced upon in second year and tried making my own, and till this year was something very personal to me. I don’t really share anything I write with people (which is weird considering it’s on my blog), but I meant marketing wise, I don’t send specific links to people, unless I think I’ve written something great. I avoid sharing links on my family group specifically. GloPoWriMo was just something I did. This year was different because my mother chose to participate in it as well – and it became pretty evident to me that she had a penchant for rhyme schemes, which is the opposite of the poetry I write. She posts her poems on our family group and daily, and follows up to ensure that we’ve each read it. To each their own, I guess. And I must admit, I’ve been terrible at talking to her about her poetry. I’ve read them and not commented, for example – and a lot of this is because of how I interact with my own poems. But, over the month, I’ve realized how important GloPoWriMo is in terms of getting people out of their writing cocoons – one that my mother was certainly trapped in. So I started to speak to her more about it, consciously. The other thing is though, that it became pretty clear to me where I got any writing talent out of (the formal writing like e-mails and letters is my dad’s genes, the informal stuff is my mum’s).

So I leave you with my final piece from this year’s GloPoWriMo, and I look forward to April 2020, which will be my last month at University – where I started this blog.

A minimalist poem is today’s prompt.

Bathing

Water
Water
Soap
Water
Water
Water
Water
Water
Waster.

Today, I’d like to challenge you to blend these concepts into your own work, by producing a poem that meditates, from a position of tranquility, on an emotion you have felt powerfully.

This is what today’s prompt says. And it’s terribly difficult and confusing because I’ve felt a lot of emotions powerfully. Wow. I’ve chosen not to do this one from the NaPoWriMo website because I didn’t feel like it was a prompt I could associate with as easily.

Instead, I’ve chosen to write another prompt: a septolet.

Helping at Home

“Set the
dining table!
Guests are coming!”
So I sprint
And spill water
Everywhere.

 

 

 

It appears that today I must write a meta-poem. So I’m writing a haiku about poems.

Poetry

Does it need to rhyme,
for it to be beautiful?
I do not agree.

Today, I have to use a Shakespearean sonnet as inspiration.

I’ve picked Sonnet VIII.

Music

“Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?”
Asks Uncle William,
At which point I immediately raise an objection, and ask
“Music to hear, why hear’st though music joyfully?”
To which Uncle William offers no response.

So I must articulate,
Kindly bear with me here,
Because Uncle William appears to dictate how my
Emotions must respond when there is music to hear.

I will hear music exactly how I please, thank you,
Associating symphony, and melody,
With a vivid image of any memory,
Every note, every sound, every tune,
May bring joy to me,
But tears to you.

And indeed Uncle William,
You did nothing wrong by asking,
But this is how sadness is deglorified,
Denormalized, cast away from the spectrum of human emotion,
With society refusing to accept that
Pharrell’s “Happy”, can represent, grief of
Someone lost,
Or even rage at someone who
Played the song far too often.

So Uncle William,
I beg you to reconsider,
“Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?”,
Replace the start of Sonnet eight with
“Music to hear, so hear’st thou the music”,
For the emotion it may evoke is
Not one that requires justification to you.

 

Today, I’m challenged by a website to write a poem that features repetition.

When

I remember saying that
when I get older,
I would be cool,
That my nerdiness was just a phase
of impermanence that I had to
get through.

I remember saying that
when I get older,
I would eat pizza everyday,
Which would be easy because
nobody would be able to
stop me.

When I get older,
I remember thinking I would be
Freer,
Less dependent.

I’ve gotten older,
But ever since I have,
I’ve realized I’m no longer bound,
By the limits of my
imagination,
But by the damage society has plundered onto
the Earth.

Today’s prompt is this:

• Is specific to a season
• Uses imagery that relates to all five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell)
• Includes a rhetorical question, (like Keats’ “where are the songs of spring?”)

Why are these prompts so complicated?

Summer

Salty water lines my brow,
My sight is hazy,
All I can hear is the whirring of a cooler,
I’m definitely going crazy.

Everything smells sweaty,
Sticking to the skin,
The clothes I’m wearing are wet,
I’m crying within.

I cannot wait to see cooler climes,
Although I love summer so,
I wish I was close to a water body, or in Bangalore,
I’m wondering, where did winter go?

 

Today, I am challenged to write a poem which is inspired by a reference book of some kind. My first thoughts took me back to this collection set I possessed when I was younger.

Abo to Zul

As a gift, you were the heaviest one I opened,
My curiosity, unbound.
With a regal blue donning your cover,
You were the first ever nine-book set I owned,
Covering Aborigines to Zulus.

I remember thinking aloud,
How does 26 divide by 9?
Every answer drew up a remainder,
Yet you covered every letter of the alphabet,
Without any left-over.

In every project, you were my guide,
To my mind, you were one of a kind,
With knowledge abundant,
And cross-referencing present,
I learnt so much in no time.

Aborigines to Candles,
Cannibalism to Egypt,
Egyptians to Gymnastics,
Gypsies to Medicine,
Medeival Times to Pop & Rock,
Popes to Stars,
Stars to Zulus,
A Bibliography and Index too,
You are the reason the word
“Oxford” is etched in my memory,
And I can carry conversation on
Any topic today.

Poetry about animals is today’s prompt.

The Mosquito

Bloodthirsty,
You cause me fury,
You make me itchy,
And create the weirdest patterns on my body,
You bite me at every opportunity,
I am consoled, telling myself I have
Sweet blood,
But your lust is not
One I’d like to serve.

I’m expected today, to write about my relationship with another art form. I know few art things, so I shall attempt this.

It’s Complicated

Your black and white tinge summarizes my feelings for you perfectly,
So grey, I don’t know where to place you.
As a child you enamoured me,
My parents made sacrifices for me to enjoy your cacophony,
And my uncle first placed you in my hands.
I remember the weight of expectation placed upon me,
To make you light up with my fingers and my touch,
I remember the public performances gone awry,
Soon, I knew my talent wasn’t much.
Then we moved cities,
You reappeared in a new avatar,
I learned how to serenade you,
And with each new touch, you played to my tune,
You were my muse, and I, was in love.
Soon, however, I learned that society
Found curves and strings sexy,
You had neither, and I assuaged myself of your beauty.
I longed however, to hold another in my hand,
Whose tune was on the radio, daily.
I must admit to you today, I carried this ambition through,
Found an instrument that appreciated my left-handed dexterity,
He felt different and unique,
But then the strings cut me,
My finger, and my heart,
And I longed for your love once more.
So I sat at my stool,
Crying, like a fool,
Found old classics to win you back.
You relented,
Accepting me once more,
For that I’m eternally grateful.
But today, I long for another’s touch,
Smaller, more portable,
One I can perform with, without much.
And so,
Our relationship will continue to be complicated,
As I discover more on my journey.
Please know, however, you’ve got a special place in my heart,
For piano, you helped me write this story.

Today they’ve asked me to incorporate surrealism into my surroundings. Which is easy considering how surreal GNLU can get. The tough bit I think is the poetry part.

Grey, Green Gandhinagar

If a ghost was to visit,
I think she’d find herself at home.
Much like the afterlife,
There’s organization to the infrastructure,
And greenery to enjoy staring at.
If the ghost wanted education,
There’s enough institutions willing to give her a degree,
She can choose: Law, Design, Technology, Medicine, Disaster Management,
Options aplenty,
The real question is whether the cost is worth it,
Because even if she’s see through,
Some ghosts won’t see through her gender,
Other ghosts will ignore her,
And even if Gandhinagar’s roads are empty,
She’ll find blockades on her path to glory.

A “spoken” poem is something I’ve never heard of before. I really enjoy GloPoWriMo for this very reason – the fact that it introduces you to genres you’ve never heard of before. But when I read about today’s prompt, I realized it was fairly easy for me: since my “poetry” is largely just a string of words I put together as if I’m speaking. Just with a little more structure, I would think. Today’s poem probably takes away some of that.

Tejas Thinks

My brain’s honestly sometimes the whackiest place, because I imagine
conversations between inanimate objects and scenarios which are hypothetical and wonder whether any of them will ever happen, or whether it’s possible to confirm that they haven’t happened. The Science is crazy, you know? So many competing theories, and then there’s a layer of religion as well – which sometimes contradicts the Science. What do you believe in? Anyway, can we really tell whether or not the trees talk about how terribly we treat them, and how we uproot their friends and families? Do you think the dogs talk about how people beat them, and whom to avoid? These are things I think about when I sleep, and even when I’m awake, fully aware of the fact that,
I don’t control people’s behaviour, apart from my own,
And I make mistakes sometimes.

Did you know there was a word for the sequencing of the alphabet? I did not know this until today. That’s because today’s prompt asks me to write an Abecedarian poem, a poem with the 26 letters of the English alphabet sequentially arranged across the poem. This should be a good one, particularly considering how much I’ve enjoyed Daniel Radcliffe’s performance of Alphabet Aerobics.

An Odd Salad

Apples, bananas, cantaloupes,
Dates, entawak,
Figs, guava, hackberry,
Imbe, jackfruit, kumquat,
Loquat, mango, nectarine,
Oranges, peaches, quicefruits,
Rambutan, strawberries, tangerines,
Ugni, voavanga, wolfberries,
Xigua, yangmei,
Zucchini!