Poems that count

Poetry (pen) Pal #38

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Hey,

My laptop charger died on me earlier this week so I’m playing catch up this weekend. No bad thing. But this post is heading out a little later (and shorter) than usual as a result.

On Thursday it was National Poetry Day in the UK and the theme for this year was ‘counting’. Now I’m not normally one for a single word prompt. I don’t know why, I think I find them a little too broad and they leave me unsure where to start. The same sort of feeling as a blank page. But actually, ‘counting’ slowly sparked my imagination over the course of the week. Turns out that if you come to a prompt late you get to soak up all the good work of others before you.

You can still find some resources and great poetry over on the Forward Arts Foundation website here. And of course by exploring the tag #nationalpoetryday over on Instagram etc.

Anyway, here are a few I thought I’d share:

Boy Math by Farida D.

This is Boy Math by Farida D, from her small but punchy book with the same name.

The brilliant Hollie McNish with her poem, Mathematics.

STRIKE (AIR) by Hala Alyan

And this is STRIKE (AIR) by

Hala Alyan

, whose website can also be found here.

The words ‘death count’ have lingered in my head all week as a year on and the situation in Gaza only worsens. A reminder, on a week where we celebrate the power of poetry, of the importance of honouring and amplifying the words of Palestinian poets and writers.

Of the importance of making our words and voices count.

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A writing prompt for this week:

Counting poems. Poems that count. Poems that use counting as a structure.

Hmm, the options. I tried out placing a few different words before ‘maths’ as a title - hospital maths, dance maths, love maths?!?

I enjoyed a short play trying out all the different ways ‘count’ can be interpreted.

I counted the ways that I… avoid parties, lie to myself, like to eat pasta (more than you’d think, try it, find any random thing, just keep writing, see where you end up).

I became very conscious of what I do actually count regularly and this one came up (a work in progress):

So yeah, counting. Turns out a single word prompt can get me going after all.

Hopefully you’ll find the same, if you haven’t already :)

Nelly x

P.s I sent out an additional post in the week just gone, hoping we might share some of our favourite poems, that maybe we’d gather ten good ones. At last count there were 18 stunners. If you missed it (or like me are still retracing your steps) I’ll share the post again here. I can recommend the comments section with a coffee (or two):