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April is coming. So are the poems.

The NaPoWriMo graphic for this year is a black and white photo of a rock wall with a rainbow eye painted on it. It says NaPoWriMo at the top in black type, and at the bottom in white says (20 years of looking out for poetry).

What is #NaPoWriMo, you wonder? It’s an unofficial, unaffiliated poetry game played annually by poets all over the world (#GloPoWriMo). It grew, sort of accidentally, out of a personal challenge Maureen Thorson set for herself one April, many moons ago in the poetry-blog days of yore. I joined her the following year, and others did too, and soon it became an annual, organic free-for-all, a lively everybody-is-invited event. 

Maureen’s idea has proven so popular, people have assumed it’s hosted by some Official Org or Institution, but nope. It’s entirely noncommercial and unsponsored. She’s created a site—napowrimo.net—and accompanying Twitter account to share daily prompts and featured participants every day in April, which is really nice of her. 

Bloof always hosts a handful of our authors on our blog, and this April will be no exception. Wanna play? You can join in on your own site or social media account. See napowrimo.net for the details.

PS: This is the 20th year!

Posted on 4 Comments

1: Sample Post, tips for formatting

A black and white photo of Joyce Mansour, holding some glittery beaded decorations on sticks, and surrounded by more of same.
Joyce Mansour

Sample April post. This is my text. You can write
directly into the post, or copy/paste from elsewhere
(but weird things sometimes happen in the transition from MSWord).

Experiment! and let me know if you need help.

Single spacing between lines is shift + return.
Double spacing between lines return only.

If you want to use          variable spacing
or
   stagger
          your
              lines
use the Preformatted block option
(It will look gray in the editor but
        like this! when published!
The Verse paragraph setting
(shown here)
also lets you
manipulate spacing       as       much       as you like
and keeps all the lines in one box
instead of w
            e
             i
              r
               d
                l
                 y making each hard return into
a new spaced paragraph

Feel free to add media (Alt Text encouraged!)

Tags can be added by clicking the gear in the upper right
(That’s a bit different since April 2020)

—Shanna
PS: I expire my posts the day after they appear