Ars Poetica – Alchemy of Words

April is an exciting month in the blogging and poetry world, packed with creative challenges. Over the years, I have participated in both NaPoWriMo and BlogchatterA2Z, and this year, I’m once again diving into my favorite—BlogchatterA2Z! The challenge is simple yet demanding: to publish 26 posts throughout April, each corresponding to a letter of the English alphabet, with Sundays as rest days.

Last year, I explored The Poet’s Alphabet, a series covering everything one should know about the craft of poetry. This year, I’m taking a different approach. Instead of writing multiple poems, I’ll be writing just one, over 26 days! Specifically, I’ll be crafting an Ars Poetica—a poem about poetry itself.

The concept of Ars Poetica originates from Horace, whose poem of the same name became so influential that the title eventually evolved into a genre in itself—much like how “Xerox” became synonymous with photocopying. Inspired by this tradition, I will be writing my own Ars Poetica, with each stanza beginning with a different letter of the alphabet.

As of now, that’s all I know. This will be an intuitive, organic process, where each day’s writing will surprise me as much as it surprises you! What you’ll be reading are draft versions—raw, unpolished, and evolving. Toward the end, I will refine and weave them together into a cohesive piece.

I hope you’ll join me on this journey, sharing your thoughts, feedback, and constructive criticism along the way. For now, grab a front-row seat and watch a poem take shape from its very first lines! By the way, I just realized I had written an Ars Poetica even before I knew what it was! You can read it here.

Let’s start with the Ars Poetica for the BlogchatterA2Z challenge.

Stanza 1 of the Ars Poetica – Alchemy of Words

Around eight in the morning
 When it’s time to pack dabbas
 With rice, salad, and a curry,
 Even as a whiff of coffee with chicory
 Refuses to linger a little longer—
 As if in a hurry to leave before
 The stink of wet waste lounging
 In the corner of my house for over a week takes over—
 An alchemy of strangeness and familiarity
 Runs down my throat, knotting
 The mundane with metaphors,
 Bringing life to fleeting ephemera.
Words form a lump in my throat—
 To be gulped down, then later chewed over,
 To see if they are worth a life,
 As my mind still churns with the question:
 What good can poetry cook up
 Around eight in the morning
 When it’s time to pack dabbas?



...(to be continued)

“I’m participating in #BlogchatterA2Z“.