NaPoWriMo Day One: Nora Murray-Cavanagh – Mountains

Welcome to NaPoWriMo 2022 and the first in a series of daily podcasts bringing you poems and prompts for inspiration.

Today’s prompt comes from Nora Murray-Cavanagh who invites you to take mountains as your starting point for today’s poem. It’s fitting as we begin to tackle the mountain of poetry ahead of us. As Nora’s poem shows there are many types of mountain, and many ways to approach them. Good luck with your mountain poem and reach for the sky!

Mountains

Mountains of laundry
Mountains of porridge
Mountains of limbs and hugs and kisses

Mountains of paperwork
Mountains of pain
Mountains of inequalities, despite what they say

Mountains of green grass
Mountains of grey stone
Mountains of white snow with yellow daffs peeping through

Mountains of hope
Mountains of persistence
Mountains of fear, feeling it and climbing those bloody mountains anyway

Nóra Murray-Cavanagh

Nóra Murray-Cavanagh
I am a poet, mother, doctor living in Scotland. It’s clear to me, the creative arts are essential to our wellbeing and growth as humans. I encourage poetry, reading, writing, theatre, music and more across all groups making up our society. Let’s do this! Fascinated to hear your responses to the prompt. A shoutout to the inspirational Laura Fyfe, Stirling Makar (special Scottish word for “poet”) – her generosity and talent and warmth are doing so much to encourage poetry across the country, and perhaps, the world!

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NaPoWriMo 2022

It’s coming up to April which is NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) when poets attempt to write a new poem every day. I’m looking for 30 poets to share a writing prompt for a series of daily blogs and podcasts to keep participants inspired and motivated.

To be considered please send a writing prompt and poem based on the prompt to poetrynonstop [at] gmail.com by March 1st. Put NaPoWriMo as the subject.

The prompt shouldn’t be too complicated. Participants are writing a poem a day. It should be topic or exercise that can be used to spark ideas in a fairly short writing session. It could be a simple as ‘write a poem about your favourite food’ if you have a good poem about that.

If selected you will be asked to produce a short recording sharing your prompt and poem for a podcast to go out in April. Your poem and prompt will also be published on the blog along with a short intro. Submissions are open to all and poems can be published or unpublished.

I look forward to sharing your ideas and helping new poems grow in NaPoWriMo 2022.