This is National Poetry Month‘s 30th anniversary! This month has inspired me for years — I have written 30 poems in the 30 days of April since 2013. Most of these are listed in the Archives for each April on my See-Frame-Focus blog. Two years, 2019 and 2020 are on my Ask What Else blog. Besides National Poetry Month, NaPoWriMo provided ideas and prompts for writing poetry. Most of the time: I simply wrote poetry. On my education blog, What Else, [this blog] I often included my own writing strategies and suggestions to help students and teachers when writing for October’s WriteOut, including poetry, rather than for NaPoWriMo.
This year I learned from my friend Dogtrax about VerseLove — blog devoted to poetry writing. Today’s poem idea derived from their post, Landscape of Our Lives.
A Landscape in My Memory
Inside, Love
Inside me there is
the last hug, a hold of love
of a life lived open and freea hold wrapped around
the man, once a child
of twinkling eyes hiding mischiefa man living through loss
still open and free; my child,
a father taken too sooninside me there is
Sheri Edwards
the last hug, always there,
always felt, that memory daily loved.
National Poetry Month
4/2/26
Take a look at VerseLove’s invitation. There’s an opportunity to learn from other writers and join in the writing via comments on their prompt blog posts. Or, just take off from the prompts to begin a bit of poetry writing on your own, like this blog.