Showing posts with label challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label challenge. Show all posts

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Caught in the Downpour

It's raining, it's pouring...well, it's drizzling, if we're talking about the weather, but in a metaphoric sense, it HAS been pouring. With National Poetry Month on the horizon (only a couple more days) and Alexandria's Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day on April 30 to be organized and planned, and the awards dinner for the Alexandria Commission on Women, and a reading gig last week at Greenspring...I have been working hard to stay afloat. 

My laptop and I have been essentially conjoined for the past few days, and I have been pursuing a crash course in my relatively new Mac's capabilities vs. my tried-and-true Dell. I know the Mac can do what I want to do, but it's more familiar on the Dell--and thus faster for me. However, I still feel as if I am spending most of my waking hours transferring files via email or thumb-drive to and from whichever laptop requires them at the moment. I have promised myself that, as of May, I will become a one-machine woman again. 

If you are interested in PIYP Day, it is really starting to shape up. Everyone I talk to seems to be enthusiastic about playing a role--from my bank to the Athenaeum, from church friends to people I've met at the Folger Theater. I'm just beginning to realize that I am not in this alone, either. Cherylanne Colton has been wonderful at recognizing what needs to be done and who needs to be contacted and when. For a seat-of-the-pants organizer like me, she is a godsend: someone who develops workplans and lists vs. someone like me, who relies on serendipity far too often.

But, lest we forget the whole thrust of this month...let me issue a challenge to all you poets out there. The Academy of American Poets suggests that we challenge ourselves to write a poem a day this month, and I'm going to give it a try. They may not be (as Boris and Natasha might say) "gem every time", but if I could get something on paper (or onscreen, as it were) I'd at least have some raw material to work on during May. Thirty poems! Imagine that.  If I could do that, I might even be ready for my next round of readings when they come along.