GloPoWriMo Day 1 - tree tanka

HAPPY NATIONAL POETRY MONTH!

(and one of my last posts here on Blogger...I'm moving over to Substack this April)

This year I'm leaning into the Global version of National Poetry Writing Month, in the spirit of international connection and cooperation between what we are increasingly encouraged to think of as Us and Them (but of course we're all pink on the inside). I'm particularly going to be searching out poets of the UK and Ireland, in preparation for joining that community starting in September when my spouse and I will relocate for the academic year to Brighton, in order to be closer to her family. The poets.org poster for this year seems to know something of our efforts to pull a sword from that particular geographic stone! (I have a variety of feelings about this image, by the way; I wonder what you make of this typography, color choices, featured character, references, etc etc?)

Each day the folks at NaPoWriMo are offering a prompt, and I'll start there and see what happens. I'm using my daily drafts to work on a book with the working title of TREEOGRAPHY, so there will be a lot of tree poems this month. The first prompt was a tanka.

tree tanka

like lampposts standing

in a snowy wood, each tree

lights a different verge

of my realm: a starting point,

a green-edged destination

draft ©HM 2026

And I'm off!