"April, Come She Will..."

With Permission: Billie's Craftroom
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Warm greetings to all members, friends and followers of Real Toads. The month of April is almost upon us, and with it comes the annual poetry marathon known as NaPoWriMo.  I am excited to announce that for the first time, RT will offer 30 prompts in 30 days. Our intention is not to conflict with the official NaPoWriMo website linked above, nor to compete with any other poetry website but only to provide support to our own small writing community during the month of April. I have never attempted to complete 30 poems in 30 days, so I'm filled with admiration for those who have. I imagine that one of the hardest aspects of the task is to find the daily support for the poems one writes and I hope that RT will provide both the motivation to continue and the opportunity to share the outcomes within our group.

Aside from our usual monthly schedule and Open Link Monday, all the members of Real Toads have come together to provide additional prompts on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I must clearly state that no poet is under any obligation to answer every prompt we provide - I doubt such a thing would be possible. We are all very conscious of the fact that there are numerous prompts available on the internet, and encourage poets to make use of those that inspire them the most. It is also true that there are individual members of RT who do not frequent other poetry sites, and therefore, this may be the only forum they have to present their poem a day. I hope that we will respect and uphold each person's right to make his/her own choices with regard to what we will offer.

It is possible that those who do complete the challenge of a poem a day in April will consider gathering their work into a chapbook and I had considered the idea of including this as part of the April challenge. However, in conference with Marian, my go-to person on all things concerning publication, it has been decided that this would pose too much of a logistical challenge behind the scenes, as well as being potentially time-consuming. If anyone would like to publish their collections, Marian is more than willing to offer advice on a one to one basis, but will not enter into discussions in open forum. Please email her with any queries you may have.

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And now for the Sunday Challenge (and I thank you for your patience, if you are not in the least interested in NaPoWriMo).

Excerpt from Prologue of The Canterbury Tales
British Library

It is not the first month of the year, but this time does mark the beginning of the astrological calendar as the sun moves into Aries in late March - life begins again in Spring.
Geoffrey Chaucer described the month of April as idyllic, the best time of year to start out on a long journey through Springtime England on a quest of spiritual fulfillment:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote... 

1ZOOM.net
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While T.S. Eliot, in his major work The Waste Land, presents a very different view of a season which forces the earth out of the comfort of hibernation, and insists on regrowth:

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of dead land...

Our mini-challenge today, is to choose one of these perspectives as the starting point of a poem and write about what this time of year means to each of us. If you have recently written a poem on this theme, please feel free to share it with us today. It is not essential that your poem be brand new.