Guest blogger Uche Ogbuji writes about some longer-term results of his NaPoWriMo experience. Here’s a link to his blog from April 2012.
Though I only got up to about twenty new poems in April, that counts as extremely productive for me, and pleasingly that flow had some legs as I continued to write a fair number of new poems throughout the summer. Looking through my notes, I’ve just noticed I only wrote one or two new poems September 1st through 29th, so the NaPoWriMo effect (if that’s what it is) seems to have tailed off. Many of my writing companions from NaPoWriMo have been busy on other projects, and I’ve been working on my own more, which maybe contributes a bit to the slow-down.
On the other hand in September I did get through some important revisions of earlier poems as much of my attention turned towards organizing my poems to see what can be made of them as a greater whole. I’ve only recently started submitting a few of those from April, post-revision, and I’ve had one, “Coy Luna,” accepted and published in Shadow Road Quarterly. I still think well enough of around two-thirds of these poems to put them through trial by submission.
September 30th turned out to be a special case. I learned that it’s the feast day of St. Jerome and thus International Translation Day. I used that as impetus to work up translations of poems by Guilhem de Poitier (Langue d’Oc) and Louise Labbé (French). I look forward to autumn which for some reason has always been a productive period for me, writing poems to celebrate the Old World New Year.
Uche Ogbuji was born in Calabar, Nigeria. He lived, among other places, in Egypt and England before settling near Boulder, Colorado where he lives with his wife and four children. Uche is a computer engineer and entrepreneur whose abiding passion is poetry. His poems, fusing native Igbo culture, European Classicism, U.S. Mountain West setting, and Hip-Hop influences, have appeared widely, most recently in IthacaLit, Unsplendid, String Poet, Mountain Gazette, The Raintown Review, Victorian Violet, YB Poetry, Shadow Road Quarterly, OF ZOOS and Angle Poetry Journal. He is editor at Kin Poetry Journal and The Nervous breakdown.