NaPoWriMo 2025

NaPoWriMo, or National Poetry Writing Month, is an annual project in which participating poets attempt to write a poem a day for the month of April.

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Bringing you the first of 31 stories for April 2025.  

NaPoWriMo 2023

Day 28

Within this fabulous creation—

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius—

literary Garden of Forking Paths

lined with flowing pages

growing glowing flowers 

hiding the way not to 

dusty Death without the Compass,

but perhaps, to Pierre Menard,

Author of the Quixote,

trying his luck, in

The Lottery in Babylon,

of rewriting,

by Secret Miracle,

The Writing Of the God:

Cervantes, where remote

he tilts at The Circular Ruins tower—

its contents The Library of Babel, where Funes

the Memorious keeps the

Shape of the Sword sharp

in cutting verse

with Argentine Themes of the Traitor and the Hero

speculative in fiction

to be shelved

in El Ateneo Grand Splendid

beside payadores and gauchesque verse:

canon to the countries

literary prowess

stand beside contemporary

broader, universal themes;

El Ateneo majesty,

labyrinthine in its

gold-plated rise

as The Sector

of the Phoenix with

Immortalised beauty

in which to find

Averroes' Searching

la magnífica librería

de Buenos Aires.

Today, the challenge is to write an index poem. Start with found language from an actual index, or invent an index. My index is from the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘Labyrinths’.

Not sure if this is on prompt as I've used the contents list of a book (different to 'index'?) Anyway, Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (the brilliant Argentinian writer of speculative fiction, magical realism and essays) is my choice of book as the basis for this poem - a tribute to Buenos Aires as book capital of Latin America and its stunning converted theatre bookshop

Photograph by Peter Longden, El Ateneo Grand Splendid, Buenos Aires April 2023