Day-14
NaPoWriMo-2026
Prompt: Poetry is an ancient art, and one that revisits themes that existed thousands of years ago – love, nature, jealousy. But that doesn’t mean that poets live in a sort of pre-history unaffected by technological advances. Emily Dickinson wrote about trains, and I’m rather charmed by this 1981 poem about the “incredible hair” of actors on television. In a more recent example, Becca Klaver’s “Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie” draws inspiration from the contemporary drive to document everything in digital photographs. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that similarly bridges (whether smoothly or not) the seeming divide between poetry and technological advances.
Between her and the modern world
lies a thin barrier of archaic chant,
a timeless chime, a silent whisper.
She possesses the soul of a hermit.
Her world stretches in the arms of nature,
where the sea embraces the earth,
the sheltered verdant palms and sepia shore
caresses her soulful breath.
The modern world and its gadgets
cannot impress her nor impact her lifestyle.
Friends ask her why she is not on Instagram,
Why does she not use social media to stay in touch?
She smiles and evades the tornado of questions.
How about ChatGPT to enhance her poems?
What! Why? Bamboozled! She feels,
Poetry is the language of the heart
Words cannot be scanned and sold
Why make it bite the artificial byte!
Participating in: NaPoWriMo-2026
This is stunning, Sunita. I love the thought of having a ‘thin barrier of archaic chant, a timeless chime, a silent whisper’ between me and the modern world and prefer to be ‘in the arms of nature, where the sea embraces the earth’. And the final lines – so true! Yet here we are, posting our poems on the Internet!
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