I did it! I completed NaPoWriMo 2025! With a couple caveats:
I didn’t write and post one poem per day. I kept up daily through April 5 (including the early-bird prompt on March 31), then fell about a week behind, then wrote a bunch of poems in one day to get mostly caught up, then fell about a week behind again, got mostly caught up all in one day… Regardless, I wrote thirty poems in thirty days.
I actually wrote more than thirty poems: Before the month even started, I wrote and posted a poem that popped into my head when I decided to participate; I did the early-bird prompt; and I wrote two poems on day sixteen (although one is a silly toss-off haiku which I probably shouldn’t count).
You’ll notice I didn’t post anything for day eight. (Even without this one, I still wrote more than thirty poems.) The prompt for this day was to write a ghazal, and frankly, I don’t think I can. I’m not skilled enough and I’m not confident to attempt one. I’m trying to talk myself into it, and one may be forthcoming, but I don’t promise anything. If I try it, I want to take it seriously, and not make a joke of it like I did with my sonnet this year (although I do really enjoy this joke!)
I don’t know why I didn’t title any of my work this year. I just… didn’t.
I enjoyed the prompts this year, more so than previous times I’ve participated, even though I didn’t strictly follow all of them. The inspirational links seemed disconnected from the prompts, which was a bit odd. Maybe I wasn’t clever enough to use the inspiration.
This is the first year I’ve participated in NaPoWriMo since 2019. I take it as a very good sign that I wanted to! With the stress of the world right now, and the immense disruptions of the past several years, the fact that my mind was eager for this kind of creative challenge suggests I’m healing.
Speaking of mental health, a whole lot of these poems sure are focused on death and nostalgia for my youth, aren’t they? Do we think someone is having a wee bit of a midlife crisis? Yes. Yes, we do. What I learned most from this experience is how much it helps to write it out. I get caught up in my head, obsessing, terrified by the inevitability of my ultimate ending, and all that does is give me anxiety. Stuck in my head with this fear doesn’t help me find a path to peace. Writing is better. I’ve never been a journaler or diarist, but I think it might be a good habit to start. Or write more existential angst poetry.
Something that really stood out to me this year is how much I mix biography with fiction in my writing. Most of my poems include details or events that really happened, but in different times and places, or with different people, and then I toss in some stuff that’s straight up invented. My poem for day eighteen is a good example:
- My family had a red Hyundai when I was in high school, and my sister and I would drive around listening to NIN (though not that specific song, ‘cause that would be awkward!) and the Sugarcubes and lots of other stuff. These are among the most treasured memories I have. But I wrote the poem as if I’m addressing an ex-girlfriend.
- I did cry to Tori Amos (tw for this link) but never in front of anyone. Not a macho thing, but a private grief.
- The ennui and confusion and excitement and anger and passion were all definitely there as a teenager, but these are universal truths of everyone at that age.
- I don’t think anyone other than my parents worried overmuch about my love of mosh pits (though I don’t know if they were fully aware of what I was doing,) and certainly not any of my girlfriends. I’ve had a few friends over the years who I wish had been a bit more daring, but not any of the women I’ve dated.
- It was me and a friend who sang along to “Losing My Religion,” driving around in his pickup truck, but it had nothing to do with our souls, it’s just fun to sing. So we’d sing it a lot. That, and “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” (Shut up, don’t judge me.)
- I never raged along to “Jeremy,” despite appreciating the rage of it. My anger over social justice and politics was born in middle school and came into its first real power in high school, but I wasn’t an angry teenager. I loved that time in my life! I was having so much fun!
- The times in my life when I wasn’t safe to be around were in college and through my 20s, years removed from the high school memories of this poem.
- Finally, it was my sister who took the Hyundai when she moved out of my parents’ house, not an ex-girlfriend leaving me. I just love the power of that image of something ending, and the possibility of something new beginning.
So: details of events that actually happened, artificially concatenated together, and the person the poem addresses is entirely fictional.
I don’t why I write this way. But the overwhelming majority of the poetry I’ve written throughout my life so far is like this. Most of the poems I wrote this month are like this. I’m not trying to be mysterious or anything so trite: I think maybe this is my way of connecting my lived experience with broader truths of shared humanity.
I don’t have any grand conclusions to wrap-up this wrap-up post. Just that I had a lot of fun with NaPoWriMo this year and I’m happy I did it! I’m proud of how much I wrote this time around. I think some of what I wrote is really good, some is less good, but that’s kinda the whole point, isn’t it?
As always, I may or may not participate next year. I’ll see how I feel when the time comes.
John the Librarian 