For Vallari Sanzgiri, a journalist and writer, April 2021 had been a particularly hard time to be reporting from home or on-ground. “News of deaths and administrative apathy was coming in from every media outlet. NaPoWriMo was a good distraction,” says the 24-year-old about ‘National Poetry Writing Month’, an online writing challenge which encourages budding poets to post one poem every day throughout April. “This year with office resuming, I find it a bit tedious but I still like the sense of community it is bringing.”

The internet and social media in particular, offer a canvas for aspiring artists to express themselves. NaPoWriMo is one such space for creative experiments. The annual project was first started by Maureen Thorson who, inspired by National Novel Writing Month, began posting one poem a day on her blog in April 2003. Later, with people across countries writing poems in the same month and the trend picking up, Thorson launched an independent website for the project.