365 Days, 365 Poems.

You'll all be very pleased. Not least because I'm writing a blog post, but because I'm writing a blog post at 1:05am. When I have to be up at 8am. So, technically, it's more an attempt to give reason to my being awake at such an absurd time. But justification is my middle name, and so damnit I'm going to write you a blog! Well, half a blog. Maybe a quarter. Actually, I'm just going to write until I give up, and then finish off during the day...but, the important thing is I have an idea!

Okay. Bare with me...so, I am up early. Which led me to find a use for being awake, which led me to try to finish a poem for my poetry class on Tuesday. Which led to me struggling. Which led to me procrastinating, which led to me deciding to persue an idea, which led to this blog post.

(This is how far I managed to get. It's now Wednesday, but here is a post at least?)

You may know I do an English and Creative Writing course at university; as part of this, there is one module on writing poetry. We've been required to attend a series of poetry readings in order to experience different kinds of poetry and how they change when read aloud; and also purely for the opportunity, I mean even if they're not always amazing, you can't beat seeing poets read their work for free right?

In these readings I've often had ideas for work of my own, and this idea came to me a week or two ago. I've seen all these videos of people taking a picture of their face every day for a year and things of that nature, and thought "why not try to write a poem every day for a year"? Because I'm that cultured folks.

It didn't seem like that original of an idea, so I decided to Google it when I got home. I managed to find a few people who'd done a similar thing, but no notable names that I recnognised. I like the idea of doing something immensly person like this, so I think I'm going to give it a go myself. I'll happily admit I'm not the best poet in the world, I'm probably not even a very good one, but that's not the point. I won't revise the poems later, I won't draft, I will just write a short, raw poem every day and then look over them at the end to see what I've come up with.

I think there's something pretty exciting about seeing how things like this work out; I hope I'll be able to keep up with it! Now I'll be able to leave you with a poem or two at the end of every future blog. That'll make things nice for you won't it? Anyway, I'm starting today on Wednesday 23rd February 2011, and here is today's offering.

23/02/11

Poetry isn’t my favourite thing

but I like it more than I like

getting soaked in the rain.

I’ll tell you what I love, though,

what I really love:

the subtle interplay of language.

Wish me luck with the rest!
~ Toby