NaPoWriMo 2025 Challenge Complete

In a blog post published at the beginning of this month I talked about deciding to take a stab at writing poetry (specifically haiku). Right about the time that post was written I discovered that April is National Poetry Writing Month. The challenge is 30 poems written in each of the 30 days in April. Since I had already written a poem in each of the 2 days in April, decided to join a little late. I had already decided to write a poem each day for my own reasons, so why not combine the 2? I didn't want to over-complicate things and cause myself more friction to write everyday, so I decided to stick with the haiku, and specifically NOT attempt to utilize the NaPoWriMo prompts.

I did in fact complete the 30-day challenge. To see all of the poems that I wrote specifically for this challenge click here. There are a couple of poems that I didn't publish on the right day, but that's because I wrote them as I was going to bed and didn't want to get my phone out and post them.

Though not specifically written for the 30-poems-in-30-days challenge, I also wrote a longer poem composed of multiple haiku. At the start of April, I had written 18 poems... By the end of April I have written no less than 68 poems. So I've actually exceeded my goal by 20 poems.

I was going to highlight my favorites from this challenge, but honestly there are too many to list here. I really like most of them... there are only a few that I'm not entirely thrilled with. I'll pick my top 3... in no order:

Lazy turtle head
Floating still atop the pond
Mocking my effort

Wispy plastic sheet
floating free amongst the cars...
CAUGHT! Dons steam disguise.

baby blue tea set
horse sits patiently for more
forgotten, she waits.

Bonus: I posted the following on the blackboard in our coffee house the day it was written. I was pleased when Mariah mentioned that she liked it... not sure if she (or anyone else) knew that I wrote it myself.

water pushed through seed,
turbulent crema rises
briefly, then consumed

My favorite aspect of all this has been the reminder/requirement to stop... to be still... at least long enough to capture a moment of my day. Identifying the "right" moment is difficult for me. But the challenge of condensing a description of a part of my life into an arbitrarily small number of syllables makes the process interesting to both sides of my brain, relatively friction free, and success is well defined. The haiku writing process is really well suited to my editorially and logically oriented brain. This has been enough to trick me into documenting my daily life (even a small piece of it) for an entire month straight without wanting to quit. This being one of my goals, I am absolutely thrilled.

I have no intention of ending this effort any time soon. On the contrary, one of the prompts in this challenge was to write a sonnet. Although I refrained from accepting that challenge on that particular day, the rules for writing one were described and are not all that dissimilar to haiku... just 8 times bigger with rhyming thrown into the mix. I plan to write one at some point; but finding the inspiration will be considerably more challenging (finding a 5 syllable starting line is WAY easier than a 10 syllable line).

The snowball is now rolling down the hill.