It’s that time again!

It’s nearly April and that means it’s nearly time for NaPoWriMo! This is the month where people from all around the world set out to write a poem a day for 30 days. There’s something wonderful about a creative challenge in which so many people from so many countries are involved. All that energy and focus; it’s like being invited to a big party where everyone is celebrating poetry.

This will be my fourth year taking part in the challenge and this time round I’m planning something a little different than what I’ve done before: poetry with an art-journaling twist! As many of you will have gathered, I’m pretty much obsessed with art journaling at the moment. And while I couldn’t imagine missing out on NaPoWriMo, I also couldn’t imagine a whole month without art journaling. This is the story of my life – always branching out in new directions and then wondering how I’m going to piece it all together.

It’s not entirely true to say I’m a stranger to visual poetry. Ever since I began taking part in NaPoWriMo back in 2014, Blackout Poetry has remained one of my favourite poetic forms. In addition to this, during last year’s challenge, I had a great time branching out into comics poetry. I certainly hope that these two forms will play an important part this year. Even so, the bringing together of poetry and art journaling seems to me to be an entirely new combination.

Fortunately, I haven’t had to ponder this dilemma for too long. Just this week, I started the fabulous Messy Pages class with Tanyalee Kahler over at Get Messy. This class is all about creating a multitude of amazing backgrounds and the infinite possibilities that can develop from there. As I began to experiment with acrylic backgrounds – pictured throughout this post – I realised that these would make fantastic backgrounds for the art journaling poems. There’s also a lesson on journaling and scripting – which will be perfect for experimenting with all sorts of ways to include text on the page. Clearly, this class couldn’t have come along at a better time!

Each day during the month of April, I’ll be posting my poems here at Follow the Brush. Hopefully, these backgrounds will be transformed by the addition of this year’s poems into something entirely new.

Wish me luck!