A Month of Poetry

April is National Poetry Month. A month to celebrate the magic of words. The power of poetry. To celebrate, I’m going to participate in a couple different challenges.

Poetry (Photo credit: V. H. Hammer)

NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month)

Inspired by NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), NaPoWriMo is about writing poetry. I’ll be aiming for a poem a day, but life and inspiration may have other results in mind. Whether a single new poem, or a poem a day, or even more, any new poetry is a success. Here are a few places I may be pulling prompts from.

The Poetic Asides blog on WritersDigest.com has an April PAD challenge. That’s a Poem A Day. Each morning there will be a new prompt, and top poems posted to the blog for each prompt will be compiled into a book.

The NaPoWriMo site will also have prompts. A few other sites I may visit if I need more inspiration: Poetry Prompts, The Journal Prompts, and 30 Day Poetry Challenge.

A to Z Blogging

I’m also taking the A to Z blogging challenge. So each day in April (except Sundays), I will posting with a letter theme, A to Z. So check back throughout the month for new and old poems, quotes about poetry, and more.

News about Chiaroscuro

One of my goals for this year was to publish my poetry collection Chiaroscuro. Last year I researched publishers, and compared their sites and stats.
I made a list of what I most wanted in a publisher. It wasn't about the royalty. It was:

• clear information
• print options
• listed response time
• ease of submitting (email)

I know self-publishing is an option, especially for poetry, but I’d prefer to go through a publisher for the formatting, marketing, cover book, all those things that intimidate me. It’s a process I’d rather not go through alone.
One of my top choice was SynergEbooks. I am very impressed by their website, and how much information they give in the process and what to expect, and what they expect of their authors.
I didn’t have to wait long after querying SynergEbooks to get a response. They were impressed with my sample poems. They were very upfront to answer the few questions I had, and less than a week later I was signing an Author Contract.
I am very happy to be working with SynergEbooks to publish my poetry book. No release date yet. It will be published digitally and available through the publisher website, as well as on Amazon.com and B&N.com. If it does well enough, there is a possibility for a print version.
In preparation for publication, I have created a site dedicated to my Chiaroscuro poetry book. I will be creating individual sites for each of my major projects, where you can learn more, read excerpts, and get news on their status.