Owen Niblock’s Hundred Days of Poetry


On the 1st of December 2009, I did something stupid. Something on a whim.I only did it because all of my friends were doing it and I admit, I felt pressured into it. It wasn't drink. Or drugs. Or unprotected sex. It was to go to a website everyone seemed to be twittering about


Tweeting) and read the contents with a great deal of interest. determined not to sign up, but couldn't help myself. I love a challenge.


(I hate the word I was


The site in question was hundreddays.net and its message was simple. Sign up, decide upon a task, one which will make you a better person and then perform that task every day for 100 days. Easy. I do things every day. How hard could it be? First things first, I had to decide what I was going to do. I'd been meaning to get into poetry more for a while, so thought it a good excuse to do something I wanted to do anyway. Before I knew it, I was typing into the registration form "I will write a poem every day for 100 days". Done. Right then.


At the time of writing it's the 14th of January and I've already written my poem for today (a short poem about Giraffes). That means I've written 45 poems so far - nearly half way! I've written silly poems, serious poems, two haiku, rhyming poems, non rhyming poems, Iambic Pentameter - I've even had a go at Sapphic Stanza (I've read more about poetic meters in the last 45 days than I ever did at school). So far this has all been incredibly interesting, I've started reading more poetry and I've performed poetry on stage. Musical comedy has been my love for the last 6 years and I've been performing at stand-up venues up and down the country. I've had my fair share of successes and failures and done my fair share of scary pub gigs. I'd recently discovered that audiences at cabaret and burlesque shows often like my particular brand of whimsy more than your typical stag or hen do on a Friday night in one of the major comedy clubs of this world. Then in late December 2009 I appeared at a spoken word and poetry night in Cardiff which was an absolute joy to play. Since then I've been performing poetry at most of the comedy gigs I've played and I'm starting to think about doing more straight poetry nights.


It's interesting that the feeling (I dare say it could be considered an addiction) I currently feel for poetry is very similar to my feelings when I began to perform on the comedy circuit. I have an addictive personality, although I've never been able to find the right sort of kick from drugs of the type one might consume. My "thing" appears to be drugs of the intellect. A good book. Learning to program with a new computer language. Indeed, comedy began as a means to an end. I wanted to write. To be like Douglas Adams or Monty Python. The quickest way to write stuff and get it seen seemed to be to perform it myself, so that was my impetus. As soon as I actually started performing, however, the performance became an end in itself. I fell in love with performing, despite the obvious challenges I faced (I've never been naturally good with people). I didn't start writing poetry for 100 days because I wanted to be a poet, but since starting I have now fallen for poetry.


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