A Rough Spring Start and GloPoWriMo

Every year I desperately wait to be out of the Finnish winter and into spring. Every year Finnish Mother Nature slaps me in the face with my birch allergy. If you've ever been to Finland, you'll know this is a totally unfair allergy. The snow is finally gone, the sun is shining and I can't work on my allotment, my garden, go for a walk or enjoy a Vappu (May Day) picnic without suffering. I was working our annual Finnish Scottish Society ceilidh yesterday and even though I didn't drink I'm suffering because we left a lot of windows open to keep the place cool during all the cooking and dancing. So today is a good day for couch writing with cats and a quick review of my April Poetry Month GloPoWriMo - Global Poetry Writing Month.

As expected I didn't write or post every day, but I think I only missed a few days. Some days were token writing exercises as I just couldn't find a prompt to inspire me, other days I wrote a whole poem. There are bits that might be expanded into a poem, some that just aren't worth it. It was nice to have a kickstart into writing regularly again. I especially enjoyed @toddedillard's prompts as they were unexpected, sometimes surreal but always very original and fun. He has several years' worth of prompts linked there, so I think I will continue to dip into them for inspiration. 

I also used the https://www.napowrimo.net/ site and was introduced to the Finnish poet Olli Heikkonen. He's the first Finnish poet I really could connect with and I could almost understand all the Finnish. It was great to hear him read it on the Poetry International website. It was really inspiring and I've written two poems from that prompt. It also led to some interesting discussions in my writing group about the difference between moose and elk and whether I can use them interchangeably as the Finnish word is the same.

My writing group now has a home after struggling to find a venue. Before Covid, we used the Oodi library in central Helsinki, but they've never gone back to the later opening hours, so we felt a bit rushed to be out by 9pm. Global Art Point - GAP - in Helsinki has kindly agreed to let us use their meeting room on some Friday evenings. Check the Helsinki Writers Facebook page to see which days we're meeting In Real Life. It was so nice this week to catch up with people I haven't seen in ages. 

GloPoWriMo and Spring Cleaning

The holiday weekend has been bliss. I put aside anything I had to do except a first aid online course and just focussed on what I wanted. I tidied toy boxes with the kids, I worked on my puzzle, crocheted, did yoga, some shopping and loads of writing. I should have spent more time outside as it finally feels like spring is here, but I'm not going to beat myself up because I didn't. There were things that I wanted to do inside, so I did them. There's still snow on the ground here, so I can't get into the digging the garden mode yet, so I'm happy to wait. 

Week 1 of GloPoWriMo, the Global Poetry Writing Month, and I've managed something every day. Sometimes a whole poem comes, sometimes just notes. Some of the notes have been used in other poems. some will just decay as compost. I've used a mixture of the NaPoWriMo website's daily prompts and ideas from other places. One poem was inspired by a 6th-grade maths lesson I was in. I hope I didn't look like I was fangirling while taking notes. 

Today I have an online write-along booked with Jen Hadfield. It seems strange to write silently with other writers on a Zoom call. We don't interact except at the check-ins at the beginning and end. We don't share what we've written, and many turn off their camera and mic while writing. It's the booking time with other writers, with the muse to write and the shared activity. Others are with me, struggling to put words on the page, finding the gentle pressure to produce. It does inspire me somehow. 

I just hope something will pop into my mind when I sit down to write as at the moment even with a bunch of prompts in my head I'm drawing a blank. That's often how it works, everything percolates in my skull until I start randomly writing and then somehow it comes together. I see a thread and start tugging on it until the beginning of a poem unravels beneath my hand. Other times I write complete crap, but that's the risk. 

I'm feeling the need to go through my big electronic pile of poems and take out the stuff I really don't like. I could work on fixing them, but some might just be binned. Maybe my style has changed so that I can't see what I like about them before. I've never been one for binning or burning my old poems, my notebooks, my childhood scribbles, but I do put them aside and stop working on them. 

Maybe I need to do a radical version of that. Create a new file of just the poems I currently love, that I want to find a home for, that fit in a collection. Maybe more than one file then, as some I love have already been published. Some have collections where they fit, while others don't. 

This seems to be a symptom of my current spring cleaning fit, not guddling in toyboxes for the broken toys, those who aren't played with anymore, but in poetry files. That's my day planned.  

Global Poetry Writing Month - Getting Started - Day 1

I feel the spring creeping into Finland. It takes its time here, but there are blue skies above the melting snow. The warmth streams in through the windows, but the wind is still biting outside, the grass is finally being revealed, but it's gray and dead. 

I started a yoga class a few weeks back as a way to get my body into motion again after my winter hibernation. I've practised yoga on and off for decades, but with my studies, the kids and generally just being unorganised, I haven't done a class or done much at home for years. I stumbled on a brilliant class and am really enjoying the feeling I get from gently pushing myself. Afterwards, I find someplace for a cup of tea, cake and writing. However, I've been also been struggling to get the writing going, so April's Global Poetry Writing Month challenge #glopowrimo has arrived just in time to give me a creative kickstart. It is most needed. 

From past courses and challenges, I know that I am able to start a poem a day and have learned to enjoy the challenge, so this will be a way to get me working again. The NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo website linked above has a daily prompt which helps. I also have a few books to play with for ideas. Even if I don't write every day or write anything decent when I do sit down, I should get a few poems out of it just from that act of trying. 

Day 1 - the theme is 'to judge a book by its cover'. I pondered the idea while I swept up as I waited for the kettle to boil. My life is always a series of multi-tasking, so finding some quiet time to just think and write is unusual. And as often happens the things I was doing snuck into my poem.

Notes from my draft:

You cannot draw a conclusion

from the cover illustrations 

unread at my bedside, 

from the pile of crumbs I sweep away,

from the statues that clutter 

my never used for writing desk

a queen in dismay

a bog cat

a berserker biting down on his shield

we are all cliched

and we are all jagged

a switchback of contradictions

The line 'we are jagged' came from a training lecture we had at my school recently, referring to the fact that on any continuum or spectrum, we are never just a straight line or all one thing. You can look at aspects of our personality, our thinking, and our actions and we will all have our own quirks and diversities. I liked the idea of it, but I'm not sure how to use it yet though it seems to fit in this draft poem for now. We'll see if it goes anywhere. 

At least I've started.