Sunday Morning Tea: Nov 6, 2022

Good Sunday morning and welcome to my front porch for Sunday Morning Tea!

For the uninitiated, Sunday Morning Tea is my virtual writing salon, where we talk about our writing goals and projects while sipping on a hot cuppa tea!

This morning I’m back where it all started, my mom’s front porch. I’m visiting this week for her birthday, so this morning we’re having English Breakfast, biscuits, and pretending to be British.

Kidding! Let’s talk about what we’ve been writing this week.

We’re headed into week 2 of the No Holds Barred Poetry Writing Challenge (or the Writer’s Digest November PAD Chapbook Contest if you prefer the prompts from that one). How’s your poetry writing going so far? I’ve surprisingly been very inspired this challenge. I actually wrote the first two poems Halloween night (“you’re so cool” and “A kiss in the snow“), and my little writer’s notebook is quickly filling up with the first lines of future poems.

I mentioned that I really wanted to do this challenge to prepare for BlaPoWriMo (Black Poetry Writing Month), of which I haven’t been the best participant or challenge host for the last few years. Hopefully that will change in February 2023. I’m excited for the poems to come, including another one I wrote Halloween night, after I tossed and turned in bed—my mind racing a mile a minute, questioning if I should write my Dracula script for NaNoWriMo or stick with my original commitment to write poetry in November. Finally, I got out of bed and grabbed my notebook and pen to empty my mind so I could finally go to sleep, and what came out was a poem reminiscent of Amiri Baraka’s “Black Art.” Of course, I want to hold onto it for now and use it to kick off BlaPoWriMo in February. So you’ll have to wait and see how my midnight Halloween poetic rant turned out.

One thing that has been frustrating is when my poems start to develop a rhyme scheme when I don’t intend for them to. I hate writing poems that rhyme because I feel like they limit my creativity. I switch from painting beautiful images on the page to asking myself, “What word rhymes with ‘best’?” I like the natural meter and rhyme scheme that forms when I’m simply writing my thoughts, but when that stops, I’m left with a poem that doesn’t always feel complete, but if I continue it, the words don’t feel quite as inspired as the ones that flowed naturally with rhyme. I’m just forcing a pattern that’s not there anymore. So I think my favorite poems I’ve written so far are the ones that don’t rhyme, and of the ones that do, I only like the first half because that was the part that came naturally.

But let me know what you think! Do you have a favorite poem so far? Have you written any that you haven’t yet shared with others? If you have other writing goals for November, how are you progressing?

And before I forget, I want to shout out a couple bloggers who’ve joined me in writing a poem every day in November, A.C. Melody and Ladyleemanila. Do check out their lovely poems!

And if you’d also like to take part in the No Holds Barred Poetry Writing Challenge, information on how to join can be found here, but the only rule is to simply write a poem without restriction (no holds barred). Write whatever comes to mind and call it a poem. There are no gatekeepers in this space. And if you’d like to share your poem with us, you can link to one of my posts, if it inspires you, or use the tag “NHBPWC 2022” in WordPress.

Until we meet again next Sunday for tea!

—Nortina