“The month’s new-complete contribution /
Re: concepts, reactions, allusions; /
A break from spring’s stressing: /
Chem-terms, verse-addressing, /
In welcome routine’s resolution.”
The 30 April 2025 Bluesky limerick marked the end of my seventh attempt at the National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) tradition, and this is our last week of spring classes, so it is a good day to formally end the 2025-2026 “academic year” posts.
“The month’s new-complete contribution /
Re: concepts, reactions, allusions…”
April 2025 was the seventh NaPoWriMo routine I completed in terms of daily science-themed poems; my routine began in April 2019 with the overlap of National Poetry Writing Month and the International Year of the Periodic Table.
Over the years, some of these poems have summed up specific chemical concepts; others address reaction mechanisms; several allude to figures from history or famous scientific stories.
“A break from spring’s stressing: /
Chem-terms, verse-addressing, /
In welcome routine’s resolution.”
I am now a few weeks into my eighth version of this April tradition– or rather, I hope I will be, since I write and schedule these essays a few weeks ahead. If so, I suspect it will be the last one in terms of such formal adherence; it would be appropriate to end with a “full octet” of the April poem collections. I’ve also noticed that I don’t need the cyclic routine quite as much in generating ideas for posts as I did in the first few years of the website.
In an academic term, though, NaPoWriMo arrives at a particularly opportune time to merit “a break from spring’s stressing,” so time will tell. For now, I’m glad to bring both the 2025 poems and the 2025-26 essays to a welcome resolution.
Chemphasis 