I wrote and posted my 2024 goals for both fiction and writing a few weeks ago. It was just a general essay on what I hope to accomplish overall this year in writing (mostly concerned with my fiction works in progress).

Then I thought about my poetry. And realized I do have some specific goals in mind for my poetry in 2024.

So I want to take a moment here to list out my goals for poetry. I will be working on the following poetry projects in 2024:

• Finish formatting my first poetry ebook, Swamplily Zen, before the launch date of 3/1/2024.
• I am currently writing a shit ton of poetry. The February Instagram poetry challenge, "Post-It Note Poetry," is coming up soon and I will use some of the poems I'm writing for it, and write new ones. My goal again is to participate by posting a poem each day in February. Including one on Leap Year Day, about Leap Year. My grandmother always told me that "Whatever you do on Leap Year Day you will do for the next four years everyday." So writing on Leap Year Day is good, right?
• "3 Ways of Looking" linked poetry. I have had a lot of fun writing these poems since I first started writing them during last year's "Post-It Note Poetry" challenge. "3 Ways of Looking" poems are three linked verses of haiku or senryu on a subject. So far this year, I have written nine of them. My goal for 2024 is to write a total of fifty of them. I would like to collect them eventually into an ebook.
• Octains. This is a shortform type of poetry that I invented. It's an eight line poem that juxtaposes two related subjects (up/down; happiness/sadness, etc.) The form is arranged somewhat similar to a haiku, tanka, or Fibonacci poem. The syllable scheme is based on multiplication and division (or addition and substraction, however you choose to look at it). For instance, start with two syllables on the first line (the opening subject) and increase by two syllables on each line up to line four, then decrease by two, ending on the last line with the two-syllable opposing subject line. Line 5 usually serves as my "volta" or "turn" of attention to the opposite subject. I invented this style, but surprisingly have only written a handful of them. In 2024, I want to write about 5 more of them. More if I can.
• Tanka. I have not written very many tanka so far. I hope to write at least ten more tanka this year.
• Haiku/Senryu. Of course I will be writing more of these. I do not know if I will ever break my haiku/senryu streak of 200+ of them in one year but I will try. I did that in 2020. I am always writing them and in 2021 I started riffing off the Japanese Masters (Basho, Issa, Buson, etc.). I would like to do some more of those as well.
• Spec Fic Poetry. It's been a long while since I've written some speculative fiction poems. I would like to work some up to submit to some science fiction and fantasy magazines. Speaking of speculative fiction poetry, there are some nuggets in my recently published collection of previous published fiction and poems, Four & Twenty Blackbirds, on sale now at Amazon for Kindle.
• Blogging about poetry. I don't do near enough blogging about fiction, let alone poetry, so I would like to at least write one or two more posts (excluding this one) about poems this year.

That's about it for my 2024 poeting plans. Looks like I'm going to be cranking out a lot of words (and verses) this year!

Happy New Year to you, dear readers of this blog. I hope all of your hopes, and dreams, and plans go just the way you want.