It seems like forever since I have posted. Relatively speaking, for 2021 when I started my two year writing journey, it has been forever. Barely having missed a day, let alone two in a row up until recently, it’s been a week! But rest assured, I have been writing, just not prose. Rather, I’ve been writing lots of “modern poetry”, or what I think is modern poetry, on my microbursts poetry blog. That, too, though, would not be complete accurate. I’ve been writing a ton of drafts, but posting only a bunch, and most of which is for a secret writing project rather than that modern poetry blog I have shared.

For those who follow me on WordPress, I didn’t realize one could follow a blogger, or just a blog. It seems if you followed a blogger, everywhere they go to post, you would get notified of it. I thought you could only follow a blog, in which case, my three short poems per day for about a week wouldn’t have annoyed any of you that I thought were only following this blog. My apologies for that. However, as feverishly as I am writing modern poetry these days, I have decided to post just once per day on the microbursts poetry blog, to save my poems for a longer streak of daily publications because my current composition rate isn’t sustainable. Well, it might be, being the big ideas guy that I am, but I’d be giving up too much time and other potential activities for it that I’m not willing to.

The fervor of modern poetry composition I’ve been in of late is not completely new to me. I’ve just not seen the poem production rate before due to how easy and simple I have made poetry writing for myself now compared to before. No extra blog post formatting with the poems. No expectations of notes to write that can make each post a little, if not daunting, pending how much explaining I felt I had to do for my own notes. No editing of ideas for rhymes and/or syllabic counts of lines or in total, as with haiku and Tanka. Now, it’s just the words and poems, with a written syntax clearly defined so that I just break lines the way I pause and read the poems. What liberation!

But as said before, I also have a secret writing project on the go, and that’s actually where I’m composing most of my “modern poetry”. I’m going to keep it a secret only because I want to do a social media experiment to see how it grows, or not, without my external influence to introduce people who know of me and/or my writing work to it. Basically, see what hashtags, tweets from new accounts, and such, as well as the quality of the work, or lack thereof, itself. I put in the negatives because, remember, I was able to have a finsta (take Instagram) account for a year without followers, which is a lot harder than you might think to do with all the bots and spammers out there! I might be able to do the same on lack of merit in my modern poetry to try and gain followers and supporters! However, this secret project is really capturing my imagination, and I’d have to admit, I’m a lot more passionate about it currently, as well as inspired to write a lot more for it, than my microbursts poetry blog! Worry not, though, my embracing of modern poetry in microbursts is not some flash in time. I am really hoping to do a streak of at least a poem a day for a year, or over 95% of days in a year if not a streak from June 1st this year.

Writing as I might have been, I have also been looking into, and making myself into, an Instagram poet or Instapoet. Many of my new modern poetry poems are ideal for that, and Rupi Kaur’s Instagram poetry, first introduced to me via more conventional e-books, is what inspired me to do this. Hearing her read the poems in milk and honey‘s audiobook format resonated with me in that I recognized I had a voice inside me like that. Not on the same topics, and at the same ability, but a similar voice. Think of it as she has a violin and I also have one with which to play music. She’s just playing revered classical and I might be playing mocked out country fiddle music lol.

I’ve had the idea of posting my old structured poetry on Instagram several years ago, given many were short haiku and tanka format perfect for a Post-It sized square on a smartphone. However, I could not for the life of me find an app to create such a look that was either easy, effective, or not annoying with crazy ads. This time, though, I found the Phonto app (Android, iOS) that I have to say I am just in love with! Tons of fonts. Easy to use. Many nice features easy to access, like centering of text buttons. Minimally annoying ads. It is just a joy to use and has allowed me to become an Instapoet!

 

So let my Instapoetry phase begin!

If you’ve ever thought of sharing poetry or short writings on Instagram, I would highly, highly, recommend Phonto. I haven’t tried the other apps, but it’s like true love. It makes you forget and not care about the other ones because it has pretty much everything you need. For me, that’s just simplicity for look and variety and command of text, because with poetry and me, it is all about the text. And if you need to do longer poems, put them on multiple images and post them as a gallery where one would slide an image after reading a stanza or two, to get to the next stanza or two. I haven’t posted anything longer than can fit on one image, but when I do, I’ll come back and edit this part with another Instagram post from my microbursts poetry Instagram. And yes, I did brand it and my blog with a logo of a rotated, reflected, and slightly modified lowercase m to look like a B as well, in uppercase in the spirit of bursts being the opposite of micro.

 

I also “branded” my secret project with a logo, for which the Instagram has an even better look through meanings associated with the background colours beyond a feel for the poem as a colour. If only I could show you it. Ah, well. Stick around. Maybe I’ll share it in a year or so.

For now, posts here will be a bit more sparse than earlier in the year. I also have “real” prose and poetry to write for writing contests that I can’t share here because posting means publication, which makes it ineligible for the contests. Just know I’m still writing, and actually more than ever.

 

 

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