May - the title song poetry challenge
A challenge for every poet
I’ve been here as a contributing creative for a year this month! They say if you make it past 50 something posts you’re in it for the long haul. I’m not going to do a post on how I got here. I will show you instead. This is an invitation to a poetry challenge that lasts for the whole month. I’ll give you something fun and exciting to write about without doing so much writing.
Last month a prompt from NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) was the word Cardigan. It appeared in a song by a famous singer songwriter. I took the word and remembered the band The Cardigans, fronted by the lovely Nina Persson. I remember seeing the Cardigans back in the day when they were starting out. They were huge in Japan, before Europe and America picked up on their music.
I took a bunch of song titles and wrote a poem. It started with a song I could remember first. You can read it and the comments it received here on my publication.
I don’t think this is a copyright issue as the lines are all quotes from titles. We all like our music and we have different tastes in music. So attribute and write in your post/comment that this is a poem based on song titles from band X to avoid confusion.
Let’s dedicate the month of May to write poems about favourite bands by using song titles only. My understanding is we can use song titles, don’t change them in anyway and don’t talk badly about the band/song if you wish to stay out of trouble. Poetry might not be your thing, now is your time to try it out with song titles for each line. If you prefer longer pieces of fiction, write a chapter or sentences including the song titles of your chosen band, be my guest. The prompt is there for you to explore and serves as a suggestion only. You can post here so you get others to see your work and comment too.
Each day in May will have a letter assigned. So, in alphabetical order, get started with a band or singer with A. The days are scheduled in with a corresponding page which will become available on the day. If you want to prepare in advance you can, but poems can only be published to the web on the day. That means you won’t necessarily be getting an email for all of these in your inbox. It will be a word of mouth.
1 May: A 14 May: N 27 May: share your favourite song title poem
2 May: B 15 May: O 28 May: share another person’s song title poem
3 May: C 16 May: P 29 May: what was your experience of this?
4 May: D 17 May: Q 30 May: write a letter to the band
5 May: E 18 May: R 31 May: Send poem & letter to the band
13 May: M 26 May: Z
See this as a chance to pay homage to a band or musicians you really like. Post your poem in the comments of each assigned day and your publication (if you wish) or on your publication with a link to it in the comments of each day. I will give each day its own page, but will have this as our central page where you can click to the day you need to get to. Do all day’s challenges or pick a few.
Please finish linking the final letters from this page!
This is fantastic! It's going to be a really fun challenge and I'm looking forward to seeing what people come up with for it. Titles can't be copyrighted, just the main lyrics, so you're fine doing whatever you want with them. 'L' is the one I'm feeling most, I think. 'L' for Led Zeppelin. Or I might have to save them for 'Z'. Haha... 😎