It’s that time of year again when poetry madness takes over the brain! That’s right it’s WoPo Time and that means it’s Write Time!

But where to begin? January is often full of left over Christmas and manic exercise binges and the drudgery of trying to catch up with all the work that slipped during the festive period – however it is no longer January, it is February and that means it’s time to switch on the creative brain.

What better way to do this than to take up a writing challenge?

A poetry writing challenge – such as the one we run here at WoPo every February. The rules are simple – try and write or compose or create something poetic each and every day for February. They can be rhyming, free verse, picture forms and songs, they can be a specific form such as sonnet or limerick or a study of form, serious, funny, political…. and so on.

Some people find a theme and roll with that other have to fish around each day to find some new inspiration and this is all find and good and how it should be! Creativity is a muscle – the more you use it the easier it gets so if you are a beginner or have not written anything for a while do not worry overly if you are off to a slow start, you will get there and actually we all have our own preferred methods of working you might just not have found yours yet! And that is part of what WoPo is about – it is about giving you tools to explore the means to write and create yourself, don’t expect to get something amazing straight away or every time just enjoy finding new ways to get that initial spark going.

To help with this there will be exercises and inspiring ideas going up on this blog through out February, along with guest poets explaining why their writing processes and what drew them to poetry.

There is a Facebook Page and Facebook Group – the group is closed so you will have to request to join but this is so that if you want you can post poems for feedback or just to share, the feedback is from the group in general though and not a critique clinic. Also follow twitter handles @TheMonsterBlogs and @Saffy, not to mention the Pinterest Board!

This means it is time to get writing so sharpen those pencils, refill the ink and top up your charge, grab a beverage of choice and get writing and remember – when in despair that February is a short month even on a leap year!

Now what are you waiting for there is an archive of exercises to get going with!