Comments on: National Poetry Reading Month? Is He Serious?

By: the poet

the poet — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:07:06 +0000

I wish you the best of luck. I wasn’t aware that you folks in the UK weren’t as McQuisitive as we parochials on U.S. soil.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 29 May 2008 06:56:46 +0000

I take the point. In the UK, we don’t have any of these things. In fact we don’t even have a month dedicated to poetry, just a single day! I’ve been entirely unaware of all those other dedicated months.

Anyway, I’ll see how the NaPoReMo thing goes, or if it goes at all.

By: the poet

the poet — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:03:57 +0000

Hi Rob. Thanks for weighing in.

I don’t mean any disrespect, but we have so many months devoted to this and that and it just gets laborious even thinking about them. National Poetry Writing Month, National Novel Writing Month, National Novel Editing Month, National Novel Finishing Month, and it just goes on and on, even to include months for artists and photographers. I mean, if that’s what it takes to motivate people to do something then by all means, charge ahead. But I would think that one’s love for the medium would be enough. Imagine someone instituting a ‘National Love Your Wife’ month. How would fly, I wonder?

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 27 May 2008 22:32:13 +0000

Yes, I am serious. The main idea is to get people buying and reading poetry books, especially those who don’t normally read much poetry. Lots of people write poetry, but not so many people read it or buy the books. I don’t expect NaPoReMo to catch on in the same way as NaPoWriMo, but I think it’s worth a shot. Not sure what you mean by ‘getting out of hand’. Poems need readers and there aren’t enough of them. I appreciate the whole designated month thing is, in a sense, all wrong, but I thought I could use it for good. If you don’t like the idea, don’t take part.

By the way, the Re stands for ‘Reading’, not ‘Reviewing’. What people write about the poem can be very simple.

By: Jim Murdoch

Jim Murdoch — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:42:38 +0000

Actually we don’t get away with it so easily: it was National Poetry Reviewing Month. It’s why I hedged my bets when I made my comment because committing to reading a poem is easy, finding something worthwhile to say about it is another thing entirely. If I can find a book of poems I like (and that is asking something) I might see what I can do for a change to the long blogs.