When Kelly and I launched the Read More/Blog More Poetry event in January, my goal was to get people (including myself!) talking about poetry. For me, poetry is a passion. It’s something that I read almost every day, even if it’s just one poem. But I’ve found that I don’t talk about it enough. For Kelly, her goal was to read more poetry. (Hence the Read More/Blog More Poetry name, fitting both of our goals.) For the most part, I think the event was a success every month, but once the middle of the year rolled around, we felt like the event lacked some structure. People, especially those new to discussing poetry, just didn’t know what to write about.
If you have participated most months (I’m looking at you Jeanne, Lizzy, Snowball, Kwadwo, and The Parrish Lantern), thank you so much for the effort you put into posting about poetry each month! I have a feeling that the way you participate in this monthly event won’t change. We’ve made it so that you can keep participating in the same way you have all along. If you haven’t participated in the past, I hope you’ll be enticed to join us!
Make The Poetry Project about your goals.
Kelly and I came into this project with very different goals. I wanted to blog about poetry more, she wanted to read more and then blog about it as well. She wanted to explore poetry as someone who isn’t an avid reader. I wanted to bring my passion for poetry to Regular Rumination. So far, this has worked great for us. If you are already a regular reader of poetry, maybe you don’t want to follow our prompts. If you aren’t sure what to post about, follow along and talk about the topic of your choice.
All you need to do to participate is post about poetry once a month.
There is no more time constraint. Originally we had the posts scheduled to go up the last Tuesday of the month. If this works for you, keep it up! If you’d like the freedom to post about poetry during any day of the month that works too! All we ask is that you link up to your post by the last day of the month so we can include you in our monthly round up. The round up, where we summarize and link to each post, is my favorite part of this event.
But! If you want to post more, now you can!
If you post about poetry more than once a month, we now have a way for you to share those poems. Maybe you want to discuss the topic of the month (listed below) in one post and talk about something else in another. Now you can link up to all the posts you have for the month, related to poetry, and we’ll sum them up at the end of the month. More posts! More poetry! Yay!
Not sure what to talk about? Follow these prompts!
After looking at successful memes across the web, one of my favorites is the “Top Ten Tuesday” meme. What is great about this meme is that you can look and see what topics are scheduled for which Tuesday months in advance. We wanted to have a more structured topic to post about each month and Kelly and I came up with a list.
July – Meet and Greet Questionnaire (see below)
August – Poem by a Pulitzer Prize winner
September – A classic poem
October - Halloween poems
November – War rememberance
December – Holiday Poems/Mid-Year Reflection
January – Poems by Christina Rossetti
February – Poems about love, hate or heartbreak
March – A new release poem/book of poetry (2012/2013)
April – What could have made you appreciate poetry more when you were younger? How would you raise a poetry reader?
June – Read a poem from the list that started it all.
July – Shakespearean sonnet
As you can see, it’s a varied list with some specific poets or types of poems, some topics to discuss, or general themes. As I’ve mentioned, you don’t need to post about the prompt to participate. As long as you’re posting about poetry and you let us know about it so we can link to it, you’re participating.
For July – A few questions
This month, in addition to linking to your other posts about poetry, we have a few questions! Think of it as a way to get to know the other poetry readers. Post the answers to these questions any time in the month of July. Kelly will be hosting the Mr. Linky on her blog.
1) Why do you want to join the Poetry Project?
2) Do you have a favourite poet?
3) Hopefully this will go longer than a year. Do you have any suggestions for monthly themes?
4) What are your experiences with poetry in the past? Have they been positive or negative?
5) Tell us about a poem or poet that has had a profound effect on you. If you can’t think of a poem, how about a song? Or a line from a story?
6) What frustrates you about poetry or the way we talk about poetry?
7) Tell us something about yourself that has nothing to do with poetry!
Thank you for sticking with us this past month as we discussed and revamped the Poetry Project. Kelly and I are both really excited for the year ahead and we hope you are too! As always, if you have any feedback, please let us know and happy poetry reading!
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