Last year, I made a stab at National Poetry Writing Month, or NaPoWriMo. In reflecting on the experience, here, I note wanting to give it another go, which remains true enough despite the amount of things I need to get done between now and the middle of April. (I need the creative outlet; there’s only so much of each day I can spend staring at tax forms.) I note also that I want to move ahead with a bit more structure, aligning the poems to a single style and to a single theme. So much remains true, and I hope to be able to compile the results into a chapbook that I can send off to contests or print and try to sell myself.

So, in the lead-up to NaPoWriMo 2026, I’m offering a couple of polls in which my readers have the chance to steer my work on the project. Results will be discussed on 30 March 2026–and I reserve the right to do something else entirely. I am aware of what the internet is and how it can act at times. I’ll also note that I’m much more likely to consider responses from those who chip in to fund my delinquency artistic endeavors, with those persons sure to receive public thanks. Just so you know.

As with last year, I do intend to keep my regular things going while NaPoWriMo is ongoing. Hanlon will continue through the month, and I will continue making my comments about it. I am coming up to a break-point on the Robin Hobb rereading, though, so that might go on a bit of a break while I address NaPoWriMo and one or two other things. I’m not abandoning the project; there’s a lot yet to do. But I would like to address this one, as well.

Do you want a poem, a poem of your own, whatever the polling might say?
Then fill out the form; I’ll get on the horn, and we’ll talk ’bout what you’ll have to pay.

Or you can send your support along directly!