Young Writers Society

First things first, head over to the NaPo Forum! Here you'll find fellow poet's threads, information topics, and other relevant event information. To get started, create your own thread! Give it a super fun name, and if you want to get crazy— maybe a theme! To find out more about how to get started, you can always click on the 2024 NaPo Information thread. In this topic, you can read more about what NaPo is, how to get started, and what bonuses are going to be included on YWS this month to celebrate!

Next, you're going to want to head to the FAQ thread.

If you're up to the challenge, check out the April Madness competition and consider joining! This is an awesome March-Madness-esque bracket contest where YWS poets go head to head with their best writing from the month! It's a great way to get involved with the community and show off your killer poetry skills at the same time! The planting window to sign up to participate in April Madness is over on April 3rd - so make sure you sign up soon!

Make sure to check out the 2024 Badge thread and start tracking your progress towards your badges! How many can you collect this year? Don't forget - if you want to earn your Poem A-Day Badge, make sure you're posting at least one poem a day in your NaPo thread!

A favorite from last year, #PCrewPicks and #PeoplesPick are back! Make sure to check out the official #PCrewPicks awards, here. Every poem featured by the Poetry Crew receives an exclusive badge!

Don't forget you can earn your Poetry Jam Badge by attending the poetry jams and write-ins frequently posted in the People Tab. Make sure to save the links and sign in somewhere on the WFP. If you don't see any hosted when you can attend or when you want to write, start your own! Click the WriterFeed Pad tab in your personal menu on YWS!

NaPo Countdown: Tomorrow is the last day of March! If you haven't made your thread for NaPo, now's the time!

EllieMae is hosting a contest! Check it out here: Spoken Word & Visual Poetry

Join the Napo Eve (Eve) Party: here!

Wanting to participate in April Madness? There are FOUR spots left! Sign up before April 3rd!

This March, Poetry Crew introduced a new way to get poets ready for NaPo with our NaPo Prep Ice Cream Sundae Challenge.

Participants are tasked with completing three challenges (to earn 3 "ice cream scoops") along with 2 Parlour Jam links (2 "toppings") to make up their marvelous Ice Cream Sundae!

Although only three challenges are needed, many have opted to participate in even more to take advantage of the fun!

The challenges have been shared on the walls of mods, and then re-posted in the Challenge Thread where users can claim their badge and log their participation.

Some of the challenges have been...

share your favourite poem you have written!

Gather 5 "inspiration" sprinkles... they could be a prompt, a song, a photo, a quote, a little poetry snippet, or a poetic form, anything that is going to "inspire" you during NaPo.

Share your NaPo Goals!

What a delightful way to get ready for NaPo while we're counting down the Jam Jars! The deadline for logging the challenges in April 1, so if this is an activity you've been participating in, be sure to log your information before then! And watch for the sweet badge sometime in April.

OrabellaAvenue is one of our wonderful Junior Moderators on the Resource / Community Crew - who can often be found welcoming new members and offering a helping hand in site events and activities! This will be her very first National Poetry Writing Month, and here's her poet profile to learn a little bit more about a first-time-napo-goers strategies, goals, and what she's most looking forward to this month!



Orabella: Actually, not much! I've always loved poetry, but for the longest time I couldn't sit down and write a poem, for one reason or another. It's really only been recently that I've gotten more into it... I have a handful of poetry from other years (maybe 10 in total?), but for 2024 alone it's already way over 20 poems. XD



Orabella: First of all, poetry is just so much fun to read and write. But I feel like it touches into deeper topics than a lot of other forms of writing do. When you read and write poetry, you connect so much with others, and even yourself. Writing 30 poems in a month will definitely be challenging, but I think there's so much fun to be had and so much to learn from.



Orabella: So, I would say a poem each day for 30 days, but I know that's not going to happen. I'm going on a Choir trip to Disneyland over spring break (and yes, my spring break is in April), and I have a feeling I won't be able to poet much then. But my goal is still 30 poems, just not confined to each day.



Orabella: Observing! That's where most of my poems come from. Observing the world, observing other people, observing myself... that helps with the flow of ideas, which is crucial if I'm gonna churn out that many poems in a month. But also, setting apart a time of day to write them! For me, I usually write in the mornings and evenings - right when I wake up and right before I go to sleep.



Orabella: Hmm... well, not much yet, but I can say the general theme is feelings, colors are in the forecast, and there may be a few sightings of bunnies here and there. Stay tuned.



Orabella: Definitely the community! If you're reading this, you probably know what I'm talking about. First of all, we've got some amazingly talented poets, and I can't wait to see what they turn up with! But also, literally everyone on the site is so so so kind, and having another chance to interact with them (interact with you!) is going to be the highlight of my month, and the highlight of NaPo!

If you have participated in the Ice Cream Sundae activities around the site, during March, you may be familiar with a variety of hashtags that have been present in forums and the peoples tab. This article contains a summarized compilation of official NaPo hashtags that have been used in March, as well as the ones you should know for April.

#Napo2024: This hashtag is frequently used because, well, can be used for all posts and events related to National Poetry Month. Having a new tag for each year allows us to distinguish what has been posted each year and add some excitement! Feel free to browse this hashtag and use it for any post related to NaPo.

If you have been active in the #IceCreamChallenge and #CountDownToNaPo, you are probably very familiar with these two tags already. During the month of March, many YWS users completed count-down poetry challenges, such as writing poems for friends, sharing goals, and threads!

Two favourite hashtags are #PCrewPics and #PeoplesPick! Every year, moderators on the Poetry Crew spend time thoroughly reading poems and selecting favourites. There is a new poem selected every day of the month, along with this hashtag. But moderators aren’t the only ones making these selections! All YWS members are encouraged to use the #PeoplesPick hashtag to share their own favourite poems, as we read, share, and celebrate poetry together!

#NaPoDeepDive: This has been a tag that has recently returned to the people's tab! A variety of users have been going back and reflecting on previous NaPo years. They have shared their reflections, along with summaries, quotes, and ratings of their previous themes and ideas. It is not too late to share your own deep dive with this hashtag! If this is your first year doing NaPo, no worries, there is always next year.

#PoemsForFriends: Writing a poem for a friend was one of the NaPo countdown challenges this year. Writing a poem for a friend is a lovely way to tell them how much you appreciate them and love them.

#NaPoGoals: This hashtag was a big hit this year, with lots of users sharing their goals for their poetry writing. Creating goals is a wonderful way to motivate yourself and get connected with other users who have similar writing interests. It is never too late to use any of these tags, so please, share your goals!

In conclusion, these are just a few of the many amazing hashtags we have seen lately on YWS. There are still so many more to be discovered, announced, and created! As we begin writing for National Poetry Month, this April, let us all remember the importance of sharing and community.

The song of the poetry ice cream truck has been heard around the site as the countdown to April has continued this March! Poetry Crew and the poets of YWS have been busy prepping for NaPo! Here are the highlights of how people are engaging in Pre-NaPo or Prep4NaPo in 2024.

The Ice Cream Sundae Challenge - This year a series of challenges put together by @Quillfeather, @EllieMae, @Spearmint, and @alliyah are helping poets get organized for NaPo. (More info on that in a subsequent Orchard article!)

Poetry Jams... whoops! I mean Parlour Jams - This year the ever popular poetry-jams (poetry-themed write-ins) have been rebranded as "parlour jams" to fit along with our poetry theme. And there have been quite a few on the site posted over in the Poetry Jam Club. Frequent hosts have been @fatherfig, @herbalhour, @EllieMae, @Ventomology, @momonster, @Quillfeather, @creaturefeature, and @FluorescentAnt. Fingers crossed that these fun poetry jams continue throughout April as they're a wonderful way to write poetry in community!

Pre-NaPo Encouragement - If a NaPo thread has the green Comments Welcome tag, anyone is welcome to comment! And this year people are really embracing that even pre-napo with some kind words of encouragement and affirmation within the threads! Every thread in the forum has garnered a few likes, and it looks like people have been browsing the forums quite frequently to get familiar with what their fellow poets might be up to in April.

Poetry Writing Of Course! - Along with all of our organization and hype, the lit center has also been abuzz with activity. There've been some familiar classics posting, like @creaturefeature's new poem fading away like the rest of them and some new poets to the scene like @dm74 too! We are hoping that this April has a huge influx of poetry in the lit center.

Ice Cream Avvies - Finally, one of our favorite ways to get excited for NaPo is by committing to a theme. Oh, not a poetry theme, I'm talking about an event theme! Along with poetry crew many users are leaning into the sweet Ice Cream theme we've got going this year with NaPo Ice Cream avatars. There are some particularly cute ones on the people tab, like @DreamyAlice's and @Snoink's. Don't be afraid to join the trend!

Here's how it works... If you haven't written a haiku before, or need a refresher from school, the basic rules are 5 syllables in the first line, 7 in second line, and 5 in the third line. It doesn't need rhyme, though if you want to be a bit more traditional use nature themes and include some sort of "turn" or "surprise" in your poem. @Kale has written a very thorough and informative article on the art of haiku writing, right here if you're really interested in going in-depth with it.

EXAMPLE

The ants love ice cream
almost as much as I do
so I let them eat

Pro Poet-Tip! Since the poetic form and the word "haiku" comes from Japanese, the plural form of this word is "haiku" not "haikus". However, in English sometimes you will see the plural written as "haikus".

Here's are some favorites... If you want to read some truly nice YWS haiku you can check out the YWS Community Haiku Collection from 2022 and 2021 for couple fun collections that YWSers put together.

Feel like giving it a try? If you want to give your haiku writing a little bit of practice, you don't have to wait til NaPo or limit it to your NaPo thread! There's lots of fun Haiku threads on YWS like these ones below...

The Haiku Train

Life By Haiku

Haiku Battle