Day Six

Happy Saturday, everyone!

Our featured participant for the sixth day of Na/GloPoWriMo is Everyday Strange, where the villanelle-based prompt for Day 5 resulted in an eerie poem with even more repetitions than the average villanelle.

Today’s video is this TED talk on “Why People Need Poetry.” If you’re participating in Na/GloPoWriMo, you might not need any convincing yourself on this issue, but it’s always good to have a few arguments handy if you need to persuade someone else (your spouse, your kid, your Lyft driver…)

And now, for our (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem of the possible. What does that mean? Well, take a look at these poems by Raena Shirali and Rachel Mennies. Both poems are squarely focused not on what has happened, or what will happen, but on what might happen if the conditions are right. Today, write a poem that emphasizes the power of “if,” of the woulds and coulds and shoulds of the world.

Happy writing!