On Getting a PhD, NaPoWriMo & Stuff
Sorry, it has been a while. Things just pile up on one another, you know. But here’s the main news. The thing I’ve been waiting for since last December finally happened. Last month, on the 16th, I got my TARDIS driving license. Which is to say, I successfully defended my PhD thesis. What? I’ve been waiting to make ‘Doctor’ themed jokes for a while now. But you know the strangest thing? Happy as I was (and still am) about the whole thing, the immediate aftermath of it felt a bit deflating. Like, what am I supposed to do with myself now? I mean, I have enough on my plate, don’t get me wrong- classes to teach, scripts to evaluate (how is about 80% of my life consumed by examinations and grading? I seem to remember these being a lot less frequent when I was a student myself!), data to collect and enter into endless excel sheets (did not sign up for this, smh) and then order and reorder, supervising student drama rehearsals, organizing intra-college poster contests and so on and so forth. But what about the things that matter? I go to work every day. Anyone could do that. Anyone could do what I do at work. What difference does it make? And then perhaps the other reason why it wasn’t as exciting was because nothing really changed that much. I dunno, when immensely important life-events happen, you think they would reflect in the external life somehow. Yet here I was, doing the same old things. Four weeks in, the feelings have now settled into more rational, sensible shape. I’ve also begun the slow process of turning the thesis into a book, and guess what, we are already halfway down my fifth NaPoWriMo.
I did my first NaPoWriMo in 2018, a couple of days after I was introduced to the ‘Write 100 Poems in a Year with Airplane Poetry Movement’ challenge. This was after I had had my breakdown in 2017, and I started blogging and singing and finally wrote the first 2 chapters of my thesis. Some people advised me to focus on the thesis more, and less on the creative things, but it felt like my PhD work had only started moving forward once I picked up the things I loved again, and as long as I had my poems and songs, the thesis would just go on fine. Oddly, this has been my hardest year. I have been using prompts from both napowrimo.net and @kavyajananipoetry on Instagram, as I sometimes do- partly because I like the challenge and partly because I’m too greedy to choose one set of prompts, sometimes combining both in a single poem and sometimes writing two separate ones, and while I haven’t missed a day yet, it feels more difficult than ever. Perhaps I am exhausted. Perhaps I demand too much of myself. Perhaps it feels hard every year and I just don’t remember.
I have also been struggling to write this blog. One morning in February, when it was still pleasant and cool in my part of the world, I was up on the roof, walking, and I saw a bird perched on a branch and wrote a whole blog piece inside my head, knowing then that I wouldn’t be writing it that day. Or in several days, or weeks and months. And now I am writing, but the spring has gone, and that morning has gone, and the bird has flown away. Who remembers all the words that stream through the mind like a constant soliloquy? All I know is, on some nights I want to stay distracted. Some nights I am afraid to be alone with my thoughts because the loneliness just comes crashing through the silence of the stars, and on some nights, I write silly, light-hearted poems about cat getting your tongue. Anyway, here are my poems written so far this April. We’re halfway there.
Day 1.
I almost failed the challenge on day 1 but bitch, not today.
This poem is a combination of 2 prompts. First, from napowrimo.net : "The idea is to write your own prose poem that, whatever title you choose to give it, is a story about the body. The poem should contain an encounter between two people, some spoken language, and at least one crisp visual image." 2nd, from @kavyajananipoetry 'how to be a poem.'
The reason why this poem took me forever was because I wasn't brave enough to write a story about the body. But I did, anyway.
Day 2:
Prompt from @kavyajananipoetry: Ode to serendipity. Prompt from napowrimo.net, use a word from the Haggard Hawkins Twitter account (which by the way is awesome, please do yourself a favor and check it out.) Word I picked: Dèja-rĂªve.
Day 3. Prompt from @kavyajananipoetry- to read 'Packing Tips for a Time Traveler' by Michael Janeiro and write an after to it.
The prompt from napowrimo.net was too technically specific to blend with this, so it became a separate poem. The prompt was to write a glosa, "literally a poem that glosses, or explains, or in some way responds to another poem. The idea is to take a quatrain from a poem that you like, and then write a four-stanza poem that explains or responds to each line of the quatrain, with each of the quatrain’s four lines in turn forming the last line of each stanza. Traditionally, each stanza has ten lines". This stumped me for a bit because the traditional quatrain style poems I loved (such as Keats) would require a more archaic style of writing if I had to repeat the original lines and then most of the 20th century poems I could think of were not quatrains. Finally decided on Wistawa Szymborska's 'Nobody Feels Fine at 4 AM'.
Nobody feels fine at four a.m,
If ants feel fine at four a.m,
We're happy for the ants. & let four a.m come
Day 5. Prompt from @kavyajananipoetry, to write an after poem to a Sylvia Plath poem. Poem chosen: Lady Lazarus.
I skipped the prompt from napowrimo.net which was to depict a mythical character doing daily mundane tasks. I might revisit this prompt later someday. But I decided to let it go because I felt uninspired, and the more I thought about it, the more dreadful it became. This has been an experience during this year's challenge, especially the first week or so. I was so terrified of failing that I was dreading having to write the darned poem. So I decided to let it go and told myself that I am allowed to fail sometimes.
Day 6. With that permission to fail, I ignored the 6th prompt from Kavya.
Prompt from napowrimo.net: Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a variation of an acrostic poem. But rather than spelling out a word with the first letters of each line, I’d like you to write a poem that reproduces a phrase with the first words of each line. Perhaps you could write a poem in which the first words of each line, read together, reproduce a treasured line of poetry? You could even try using a newspaper headline or something from a magazine article.
"So much universe, and so little time. " Terry Pratchett, The Last Hero.
Day 7. This was the first time I had proper fun this month and the writing didn't feel forced and laboured. Especially poem 1, 'Cat Got Your Tongue' was really fun to write. Silly, perhaps, but I loved it.
The prompt from napowrimo.net was "Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that argues against, or somehow questions, a proverb or saying. They say that “all cats are black at midnight,” but really? Surely some of them remain striped. And maybe there is an ill wind that blows some good. Perhaps that wind just has some mild dyspepsia. " On that note, here's my take on 'cat got your tongue':
The reason I picked my phrase was because their use of the other cat phrase made me think of this one, and because I loved the way James Mcavoy delivered this phrase in book 1 of Sandman Audible.
The 2nd poem wasn't funny, I suppose, but it also rolled off rather easily. The Prompt from @kavyajananipoetry was to write something along the lines of feeling nostalgic. I am a nostalgic person, so I was pretty surprised by what I ended up writing. I also combined this with the day 6 prompt (that I had previously skipped) which was to use the line: "I could poem my way out of this shit, but I want to stay and deal with this unpoetically. "
Day 8: Poem 1: Prompt by @kavyajananipoetry: Write an 'after' for Margaret Atwood's 'Three Desk Objects'.
Poem 2: Prompt by napowrimo.net: Write a poem about your alter-ego (funny because I have been watching Moon Knight and if my alter-ego ever wants to go on a crime-fighting spree as an avatar of am Egyptian deity, I would like them to kindly keep me in the loop so I wouldn't wake up in odd places).
Day 9. Prompt from napowrimo.net: To write a #nonet : "a nonet has nine lines. The first line has nine syllables, the second has eight, and so on until you get to the last line, which has just one syllable.". Prompt from @kavyajananipoetry : To write an after to Neruda's 'You can cut the flowers, but cannot stop spring.' As I couldn't find the poem, I wrote a response to the first line. Also yeah, I got the date wrong on that screenshot.
Day 10. Prompt from @kavyajananipoetry: Imagine you are a vending machine. What would you be vending? Prompt from napowrimo.net: write a love poem. This is honestly one of my favourites, along with the day 13 poem.
Poem 2. Prompt from @kavyajananipoetry : write a foodie poem. This is a haiku because I wanted to keep it thought. I have realized I really more on thoughts and less on sensory impressions as a poet, perhaps I shall work on that at some point.
Day 12. Poem 1: Prompt from @kavyajananipoetry- a list of things that need fixing.
Poem 2: Prompt from napowrimo.net- a poem about something tiny.
Day 13. Ah, I got to combine the prompts again and this was deeply satisfying. Prompt from napowrimo.net, to write a poem that joyfully states that “Everything is Going to Be Amazing.” Sometimes, good fortune can seem impossibly distant, but even if you can’t drum up the enthusiasm to write yourself a riotous pep-talk, perhaps you can muse on the possibility of good things coming down the track. Prompt from @kavyajananipoetry- to write a piplikamadhya poem (consisting of unrhymed tercet stanzas consisting of 12-8-12 syllables).
Day 14. Prompt from napowrimo.net: Write a poem describing the first scene of your biopic. Skipped Kavya's prompt because couldn't think of déja-vu moments.
..
Day 15. Poem 1, prompt from napowrimo.net: To write a poem about something you are not interested in. So I read this long article called 'Cryptocurrency for Dummies' and no, I still don't understand. I really didn't want to write this poem but I guess that was the challenge.
Poem 2, prompt from @kavyajananipoetry : To write a love-poem to your favourite word. I don’t know if I have a favourite word, but ‘longing’ is the first word that popped into my head when I read the prompt, and here we are.
Day 16. Prompt from napowrimo.net: To write a #curtalsonnet , which has 11 instead of 10 lines, the last line being shorter than the preceding 10. Prompt from @kavyajananipoetry : To write an #ekphrasticpoem inspired by one of the paintings from the National Gallery of Art.
The painting I chose was Classic Landscape by Charles Sheeler. I really struggled with Kavya's prompt because while I have written ekphrastic poems before, the artwork on display wasn't quite my type, which is to say, it didn't feel Romantic or evocative to me, even if I liked the art for itself. Had to do a second scroll past to discover Sheeler's landscape.
And here we are.
And that’s me, halfway through my 5th National Poetry Writing Month Challenge. Something that seemed to have changed since I first started posting my poems on Instagram is the decline in engagement. Perhaps it's only happened to me, in which case I don't know what I am doing wrong. While I have never been particularly popular on social media, I remember getting more views during my first NaPoWriMo. Now, I can only depend upon a handful of regulars to read my work. On the other hand, as soon as I post a poem, or a song, I get at least 1 or 2 comments that go, "Hard DM @thewriterswarmth". During this April, I've had about 20 such comments and I blocked every single one of them. What's this about, then? When did Instagram become the platform where these 'promo' accounts get more engagement and more followers than the creators of the works whose work they use, and the creators actually pay them to share their work,to zero benefit for themselves. And then they have a shit ton of bot accounts who swarm like mosquitoes as soon as they smell the scent of a new poem, which is often within a second of the work being posted. Absolute energy vampires, this lot. And creative artists need to stop falling for their promises. Our work shared on their pages bring them traffic, not us. I just wish I could figure this whole promoting your work thing.
Anyway, if you like my poems and would like to read more, please follow me on Instagram (@ruchirarambles). And if you would like to congratulate me for completing my PhD or just generally support me, please stream my EP, Timeline on Spotify or Apple or Tidal or Amazon. I know I recorded it in my bedroom on my phone, but anything can be listened to once, right? The links to all of these are on my linktree page.
Thank you for reading, and hope I'll be back soon.
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