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Fooling Around with Poetry

Written on April 1st, 2013 by adminno shouts

It is April the first and that can mean only one thing… no not the silly practical jokes and false status updates on Facebook but rather the start of the years third Poem A Day challenge NaPoWriMo. This was the first of the Poem A Challenges and as such has a special place in the hearts of us here at team WoPo.

The website has some fantastic stuff on it so check it out. Here on WoPo we will have daily writing challenges and guest bloggers plus general poetry how to.

The challenge for those who are new, is too write a poem a day for 30 days – the whole of April. It was modeled on the novel writing challenge NaNoWriMo.

To get you all started why not use April Fools Day as inspiration. Think about the silly playground pranks and how they sometimes go wrong, make a list of ten jokes and their consequences. Now write a stanza for each bullet point. The poem may want to grow using just one of the jokes – let it. This is the bones of a poem. Let it sit a while and come back to it on a later date. Do not worry about pinning it down into a specific form or rigid structure at this point – that will come with the editing.

Now get writing!

Winners of the Monster Game Card Pack

Written on March 7th, 2013 by adminno shouts

Here at team WoPo we have been having some relaxing time, recharding our poetic batteries by going for walks and listening to music and collecting ideas. Hopefully we will be ready and waiting with a brain full of brimming ideas for Aprils NaPoWriMo. We have some lovely guest bloggers lined up to inspire you through another months of poetry madness.

But before we get too excited lets not forget to announce some winners!

Charlee Brown and Len Pym are the happy winners of card packs and they will be with them shortly 🙂

Winners of the second competition will be announced next week. Until then KEEP WRITING – if you are stuck try out the writing exercises on here or check out Three Word Wednesday.

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It’s All Over

Written on March 1st, 2013 by adminno shouts

It was the morning after WoPo and all the poets sat forlorn not knowing what to do with their spare moments or those pesky poems that waited until the challenge had finished before saying ‘Write-Me! Write-Me!’.

The solution is obvious!

Keep writing – that’s right you heard correctly.

Try and sit down and just write for ten minutes everyday.

If you want to use writing exercises, there are plenty on this site under the heading of Exercises or there is Three Word Wednesday and Blue Monster for more inspiration.

The competition winners will be announced next week and some great guest bloggers shall be sharing their poetic secrets with you all soon.

But now well done! And make sure you’ve collected your Normali Tea web-badge.

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Normali Tea! Or the end of Poet Madness!

Written on February 28th, 2013 by adminone shout

Normali Tea

That is all folks!

Yes it is the end of the month and we here at team WoPo, have had a fantastic time – not all of us made the 28 poems but we have all achieved some poetry writing!

We hope have found it useful and fun too. But as we go back to normality think about trying to get yourself into some sort of writing rhythm, make writing the normal thing weather it be poetry or prose or blogging… just keep going and you will be amazed at what you achieve!

Here is the Normali-Tea web-badge for you all to enjoy.

And we will announce who is getting the stickers and postcards next week.

p.s. if you are still writing – keep going you have until midnight!

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Almost there…

Written on February 21st, 2013 by admin3 shouts

End of week three and 3/4 of the way there.

Some of you will be nearly there – keep going!

Some of you will be finished! – well done you but also keep going! Lets see just how much you can achieve and don’t forget to come back on the 28th and pick up your finishing web-badge.

And some of you will be nursing the few poems you’ve actually managed to write – do not despair! That is more poems than you would normally have written and sometimes life just gets in the way. The solution is to not now give up but to keep going and see how many you can write in the next week. Do one last big final push and you will be amazed at what you can produce with that looming deadline.

Now back to the WoPo birthday celebrations – hopefully some of you will have noticed that there is a pattern with the writing exercises. Our Part-Tea has gotten off to a cracking start. If you’ve spotted what the pattern is then post a word that also follows that pattern below in comments field of this post. It must be one that is not already a title to one of the exercises!

Stickers and postcards shall be sent out to a random selection of those who comment 🙂

Tea Postcards and stickers

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Happy Birthday WoPo!

Written on February 2nd, 2013 by adminno shouts

Happy Birthday Tea

This year marks the 5th year that WoPoWriMo has existed as a poetry writing challenge and we are celebrating! As you can tell by our birthday tea! There will be more tea related web-badges for the collectors to collect and maybe even some cake and pressies!

Now it is time to think about that poetry writing marlarky!

Today’s theme is birthdays, parties and special occasions. This back over the years and all those parties your’ve been too – some good and some less so. Is there anything particularly rememberable about any of them? A nutty uncle who always took his teeth out when drunk or the time aunty Mildred dropped the birthday cake on Harry’s head…

Make a list of events and then expand each to what it ment/means to you. How did the cake taste?

Ask yourself questions like did you like the music was the floor sticky with spilt drink.

Once you have your expanded list spend ten minutes writing what ever comes into your head about parties.

With some luck this may well turn out to be the beginning of a poem!

Now get writing!

p.s. if you have not collected your free web-bade yet go here.

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A beginning…

Written on February 1st, 2013 by adminno shouts

So WoPoWriMo begins again. A month of poetic madness.

The challenge should you choose to accept it, is to write a poem a day for the month of February. Now these do not have to be whole complete poems but rather the beginnings of poems. They are a base to work from and we here at WoPo plan to give you all the tools you need to craft your poems during and after the challenge.

If you wish to sign up go to here and make a comment, remembering that if you are putting the poems on your blog or other site to link to it. You do not have to put your poems on line – many poets do not as they want to keep the poems for traditional publication routes or are worried about copy right issues, but if you do we would love you to share!

We are running on the idea of honor for the sigh-up and completion after all if you lie about how you are doing the only person it hurts is you. Also we realise some people do not want to make it public that they are in fact taking part and that is ok too – lurk all you want there are lots of good resources around the site and advice from established poets too!

Ok so those of you who are ready to go wax lyrical, hold your horses and pick up your free web-badge!

If you’d like to put it onto your blog or web site, just copy and paste this HTML into a blog post or your site template:

<a href="http://wopowrimo.wigglypets.co.uk/" alt="WoPoWriMo">
<img src="http://wopowrimo.wigglypets.co.uk/resources/2013/Creativitea.png"
width="128" height="194" />
</a>

For those who want to just the image here is the code you need. If you feel happer with just copying the image from the site you are welcome to do that as well.

<img src="http://wopowrimo.wigglypets.co.uk/resources/2013/Creativitea.png" width="128" height="194"

I'm releasing the image under a Creative Commons licence, so you can copy it and distribute it under these terms:

Creative Commons License
Creativi-Tea by Sarah Snell-Pym is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

If you are stuck with Ye Old Writer’s Block already then you might want to have a noodle around the Exercises section.

You may have noticed a tea theme going on with WoPoWriMo this year instead of the normal muse monsters – this is because it is actually our 5th Birthday! So we are having a birthday tea but more on that tomorrow! Mean while enjoy the Creativity of Creativi Tea, think of her as a mascot as well as a web-badge!

Now go get writing!

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2013 Sign Up

Written on January 28th, 2013 by admin15 shouts

Creativi Tea

This year we are not using the pledge page but doing the sign up in comments if you want. So if you wish to take part in this challenge of writing a poem everyday during February then leave a comment – you do not have to do this but if you are posting your poems in public then you can add the link there too.

It is up to you weather you make your poems public to read or weather you want to squirrel them away for editing and attempting traditional publication later on.

This is an honor sign up or pledge and we will believe you if you say you have managed it – after all the only person it hurts if you lie is yourself!

For inspiration and writing type stuff you can follow TheMonsterBlogs on Twitter or like our Facebook Page.

Web badges will appear on this site from February the 1st as will writing inspirations and guest bloggers!

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Happy Poetry New Year 2013!

Written on January 7th, 2013 by adminno shouts

It’s 2013 and here we go with another year of fantastic poetic license and a site brimming with writing exercises and ideas to get the creativity glands going!

Our plans are to spruce up the website and make everything shipshape.

And don’t forget Kathryn Apel’s Month of Poetry this month.

Writing challenges such as the poem a month challenges, we so love, are very good ways to get you into a regular writing routine! Everyone on our team has a bucket load of writing New Years Resolutions and goals, as I’m sure all of you do as well, so good luck and get writing!

I can’t do this – Yes! You! Can!

Written on January 31st, 2011 by adminno shouts

So why do a poem a day challenge? Most of what you’ll write will be drivel and need to be thrown away, won’t it?

There are many reasons to take part in WoPo least of which is that it will bring you into contact with other creative writers, some maybe starters some more advanced maybe even coughs published!

Then there is the fact that the writing exercises will help get you into the discipline of writing something everyday. What you may end up with is a series of ideas and strong imagery at the end of the month the actual form it is written in may be trash but there are seeds there for you to grow. And equally you may find yourself walking away with a body of work that needs a bit of editing but is generally good!

You may feel you can not commit to a poem a day what with work, kids, small empire to run etc… in which case set your own target say ‘I will put five minutes a day aside’; that is all it takes to get some ideas down you can use later on.

If you wish to warm up there are last year’s writing exercises! Not to mention guest bloggers with excellent advice and inspiring words!

You do not have to use the exercises we will be post on the site for your poems; they are just there in case you get stuck!

Good Luck to you all 🙂

Welcome to the WoPo challenge!

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