Day Twenty-Five
Welcome back, all, for the twenty-fifth day of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo.
Today, our featured participant is Wind Rush, which brings us an intriguing meditation on wholeness and brokenness in response to Day 24’s first-line prompt.
Our featured resource for the day is the website of the Poetry Society of America’s Poetry in Motion project, which places posters with poems on them into the transit systems of major American cities.
Last but not least, here’s our optional prompt for the day. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the “Proust Questionnaire,” a set of questions drawn from Victorian-era parlor games, and adapted by modern interviewers. You could choose to answer the whole questionnaire, and then write a poem based on your answers, answer just a few, or just write a poem that’s based on the questions. You could even write a poem in the form of an entirely new Proust Questionnaire. We have a fairly standard, 35-question version of the questionnaire laid out for you below.
Happy writing!
- What is your idea of perfect happiness?
- What is your greatest fear?
- What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
- What is the trait you most deplore in others?
- Which living person do you most admire?
- What is your greatest extravagance?
- What is your current state of mind?
- What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
- On what occasion do you lie?
- What do you most dislike about your appearance?
- Which living person do you most despise?
- What is the quality you most like in a man?
- What is the quality you most like in a woman?
- Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
- What or who is the greatest love of your life?
- When and where were you happiest?
- Which talent would you most like to have?
- If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
- What do you consider your greatest achievement?
- If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
- Where would you most like to live?
- What is your most treasured possession?
- What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
- What is your favorite occupation?
- What is your most marked characteristic?
- What do you most value in your friends?
- Who are your favorite writers?
- Who is your hero of fiction?
- Which historical figure do you most identify with?
- Who are your heroes in real life?
- What are your favorite names?
- What is it that you most dislike?
- What is your greatest regret?
- How would you like to die?
- What is your motto?
Day Twenty-Four
As of today, there’s just one week to go in our annual challenge. We hope you are feeling cool, calm, and confident in your writing. And if not . . . well, you’re poets. Nobody expects you to be cool, calm, and confident. They kind of expect you to be more like this:
Our featured participant for the day is Sarah Davies, whose response to Day 23’s superhero prompt conjures a hero called Imaginarywoman.
Today’s featured resource is this BBC archive dedicated to the poetry of Robert Burns. You can read about his life, read his poems, and hear them read by dozens of folks, including former-prince-now-king Charles.
Finally, our (optional) prompt for the day is another one pulled from our 2016 archives. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that begins with a line from another poem (not necessarily the first one), but then goes elsewhere with it. This will work best if you just start with a line of poetry you remember, but without looking up the whole original poem. Or you could find a poem that you haven’t read before and then use a line that interests you. The idea is for the original to furnish the backdrop for your work, but without influencing you so much that you feel as if you are just rewriting the original! For example, you could begin, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,” or “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons,” or “I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster,” or “they persevere in swimming where they like.” Really, any poem will do to provide your starter line – just so long as it gives you the scope to explore.
Happy writing!
Day Twenty-Three
Happy twenty-third day of Na/GloPoWrimo, all.
Today’s featured participant is Jo Minns, who brings us a charming disagreement between an oven and some apples in response to Day 22’s “two things fighting” prompt.
Our featured resource for the day is a series of poetry films from the On Being Project, which also hosts the Poetry Unbound podcast, featuring short explorations of a new poem every few days.
And now for our (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem about, or involving, a superhero, taking your inspiration from these four poems in which Lucille Clifton addresses Clark Kent/Superman.
Happy writing!
Day Twenty-Two
Welcome back for the penultimate Monday of this year’s Na/GloPoWriMo.
Our featured participant today is Flutterby’s NaPoWriMo, which brings us a purple-themed poem in response to Day 21’s color-based prompt.
Today’s featured resource is litbowl, an Instagram account and Facebook page that posts poems and prose with the goal of helping readers find new poets and authors. The account has
Last but not least, here’s today’s optional prompt. This one comes from the poet and fiction writer Todd Dillard, who provided this idea on his twitter account a few months ago. The idea is to write a poem in which two things have a fight. Two very unlikely things, if you can manage it. Like, maybe a comb and a spatula. Or a daffodil and a bag of potato chips. Or perhaps your two things could be linked somehow – like a rock and a hard place – and be utterly sick of being so joined. The possibilities are endless!
Happy writing!
Day Twenty-One
Happy twenty-first day of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo, everybody.
Today’s featured participant is Catrin Mari, who brings us a neatly rhymed appreciation of a little-known historical figure, Dr. William Price of Lllantrisant, Wales. (With apologies for the late posting!)
Our resource for the day is the website of the Oxford Professor of Poetry, where you’ll find audio files of the nine lectures given by Alice Oswald across the four years of her appointed term.
And now for our (optional) prompt! Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that repeats or focuses on a single color. Some examples for you – Diane Wakoski’s “Blue Monday,” Walter de la Mare’s “Silver,” and Dorothea Lasky’s “Red Rum.”
Happy writing!
Day Twenty
Hello, everyone. Today we’re 2/3 of the way through Na/GloPoWriMo. We hope that by the end of the day, you have 20 shiny poems under your belt and are ready to write ten more.
Our featured participant for the day is The Four Swans, where you’ll find a mysterious and somewhat discomfiting poem in response to Day 19’s haunt/hunt prompt.
Today’s resource is the Instagram account poetry is not a luxury, which serves up new poems every day.
Our optional prompt for the day challenges you to write a poem that recounts a historical event. In writing your poem, you could draw on your memory, encyclopedias, history books, or primary documents. If you’re interested in a little research, you might find interesting this collection of letters written during the American Civil War, or this collection of primary documents concerning South Sea voyages. Or perhaps you might find something of interest in digging through Europeana, an online clearinghouse of digitized materials from cultural institutions across Europe.
Happy writing!
Day Nineteen
Happy Friday, everyone!
Our featured participant for the day is Gloria D. Gonsalves, who brings us not one, but two, poems in response to Day 18’s “other selves” prompt:
Today’s resource is the website of “selfish” poet Trish Hopkinson, where you’ll find calls for submissions, blog posts, and oodles of tips and other resources on submitting poetry for publication.
Finally, here’s our prompt – optional, as always! This one comes to us from Moist Poetry Journal, which posted this prompt by K-Ming Chang a while back:
What are you haunted by, or what haunts you? Write a poem responding to this question. Then change the word haunt to hunt.
Happy (and potentially spooky) writing!
Day Eighteen
Welcome back, all, for the 18th day of our 30-day challenge.
Today’s featured participant is Cutting Hail, who brings us a dreamy, gentle poem in response to Day 17’s musical prompt.
Our resource for the day is the Best American Poetry blog, where you’ll find new and old poems, close readings, and essays/reviews not just of poetry, but dance, art, and more.
And now for our (optional) prompt! Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which the speaker expresses the desire to be someone or something else, and explains why. Two possible models for you: Natasha Rao’s “In my next life let me be a tomato,” and Randall Jarrell’s “The Woman at the Washington Zoo.”
Happy writing!
Day Seventeen
Happy Wednesday, everyone, and here’s hoping that poetry helps you get over the “hump” of the week.
Our featured participant today is Karen Morris, who brings us a heartfelt poem in response to Day 16’s “suprise’ prompt.
Today’s daily resource is My Poetic Side, a website where you’ll find poems and biographies, a blog, poetry news (mostly UK-focused), and the ability to sign up and share poems.
Last but not least, here’s our optional prompt for the day. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that is inspired by a piece of music, and that shares its title with that piece of music. Need an example? Here’s A. Van Jordan’s “Que Sera Sera” and Adrian Matejka’s “Soave Sia Il Vento.”
Happy writing!
Day Sixteen
Welcome to the back half of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo 2024, all!
Our featured participant today is Sarah Zimam, who brings us a riddle in response to Day 15’s stamp-based prompt.
Today, our daily resource is PoemShape, a blog where you’ll find poems, close readings, art, and interviews.
Finally, here’s today’s (optional) prompt, taken from our 2016 archives. Today, we challenge you to write a poem in which you closely describe an object or place, and then end with a much more abstract line that doesn’t seemingly have anything to do with that object or place, but which, of course, really does. The “surprise” ending to this James Wright poem is a good illustration of the effect we’re hoping you’ll achieve. An abstract, philosophical kind of statement closing out a poem that is otherwise intensely focused on physical, sensory details.
Happy writing!
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