Hello, everyone. It’s the twentieth day of NaPoWriMo!

Our poetry-related link for the day is to The Volta, “a multimedia project of poetry, criticism, poetics, video, conversation (audio), and interview (text).”

Our featured participant is Richard Cowen, who has devoted his NaPoWriMo to limericks.

And now, the prompt. (As always, the prompt is optional). Today I challenge you to write a poem that uses at least five of the following words:

owl
generator
abscond
upwind
squander
clove
miraculous
dunderhead
cyclops
willowy
mercurial
seaweed
gutter
non-pareil
artillery
salt
curl
ego
rodomontade
elusive
twice
ghost
cheese
cowbird
truffle
svelte
quahog
bilious

Happy writing!

Welcome to Day 19, everyone!

Our poetry link today is to Coldfront Magazine, where you’ll find poetry news, reviews, and interviews (sometimes in twos).

Our featured participant’s blog for today is Cina Pelayo, where all of the poems are inspired by Jorge Luis Borges Poems of the Night.

And now our (completely optional) prompt! Today’s prompt comes to us from a list that Daisy Fried put together: Write a poem in the form of a personal ad!

Or, if you like, try any kind of want ad. Personal ads, though, do have a kind of poetry to them. The personal ads of the London Review of Books are particularly famous, and have even spawned a book. When I was younger, one of my favorite guilty pleasures was getting a copy of the local alternative newspaper and reading through the personal ads for (a) witty ones and (b) really horrible ones. One of my favorites was a witty one, which went something like this:

Antonymically Correct?

Ham-fisted, vindictive milquetoast seeks ineducable, filthy harridan to castigate, bore, and neglect.

Try and top that, if you like. (Oh, and by the way, the personal ad doesn’t actually have to be about you, of course. Feel free to invent every last thing about it). Happy writing!

Hello, all. We’re really just rolling along, aren’t we? I can’t believe we’re now 18 days into NaPoWriMo.

Today’s featured link is the Library of Congress’ Poetry and Literature Center, which is celebrating its 75th Anniversary! Surf around the website and you’ll find webcasts, podcasts, interviews with poets, and a lot of great information about U.S. Poets Laureate.

Our featured participant’s blog for today is Taps and Ratamacues, where the poem for Day 16 is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll.

And now our (as always, optional) prompt! Today’s prompt comes to us from Cathy Evans, who challenges us to write a poem that begins and ends with the same word. You could try for something in media res, that begins and ends with “and,” for example. Or maybe “if.” Or perhaps you could really challenge yourself and begin/end your poem with a six-dollar word like “antidisestablishmentarianism.” (Just kidding!) Whatever word you choose, I hope you have fun with it!

Hello all, and welcome to you on this seventeenth day of NaPoWriMo!

Today’s poetry link is to The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. Founded in 1966, the Project has been at the heard of New York’s poetry scene ever since, particularly on the experimental and avant-garde side of things. They sponsor weekly readings, workshops, and the Poetry Project Newsletter, which presents polemics, reviews, and poetry. They have a number of audio recordings available online, as well as back issues of the Newsletter and much, much more!

Our featured participant’s blog for today is Flood Poems, where the poem for Day 15 is so wonderfully evocative of the 1980s that I’ve now got “Angel was a Centerfold” stuck in my head.

And now our (totally optional) prompt! Early on in the month, I asked you to write a valediction — a poem of farewell. Today, let’s try the opposite, and write poems of greeting. There’s lots of things you could greet. The spring? Your new stapler? A favorite classmate? An addition to the menu at your local cafe? The subject’s up to you — now get out there and say “hello!”

Hello all, and welcome back for Day 16.

Today’s poetry-related link is Poetry International, which provides poems, both in their original languages and in translation, from all around the world. I’ve found it to be an amazing introduction to poets from other countries.

Today’s featured participant is Moon Junkee, where the superhero for Day 14 is Insomnia Girl. Don’t tell anyone, but that is who I turn into at night.

And now our (optional, as always) prompt. This is an oldie-but-a-goodie and it ties in nicely with our featured link! Today, I’d like you to write a “translation” of a poem in a language you don’t actually know. Go to the Poetry International Language List, pick a language, and then follow it to a poet and a poem. Generally the Poetry International website will present a poem in its original language on the left, and any translation on the right. Cut and paste the original into the text-editing program of your choice (and try not to peek too much at the translation). Now, use the sound and shape of the words and lines to guide you, without worrying too much about whether your translation makes sense.

For example, here are the first few lines of “Staden Glitrade,” by the Finnish poet Tua Forsström

Staden glittrade på avstånd, och
jag stannade. Det var så vackert med
anläggningar och terrasserade trädgårdar

I might translate this as:

Stadium trading glitter in the stands, our
jagged standard! There was so much made
of longing and of the tri-guarded tesseracts.

That might not make much sense, but it gives me some lovely ideas and images. Glittering stadiums, flags, shapes and desire. Those are some great ingredients for a poem!

Once you have your rough “translation,” you could leave it at that, or continue to shape the poem. It’s up to you. Happy writing!

Hello, everyone. Today marks the halfway point of NaPoWriMo. I hope your writing is going well!

Our featured link for the day is the Adademy of American Poets’ portal on poetic schools and movements. Don’t know your Russian Acmeists from your Imagists or Metaphysicals? This page will help you sort it all out.

Our featured participant’s blog is Lips and daggers, where Libby Loucks is working on a series of 14-word poems — often she posts four or five a day! It’s sort of like NaPoWriMo Plus.

And now our (again — totally optional) prompt! Today, I challenge you to write a pantun. Not a pantoum — though they are related. The pantun is a traditional Malay form, a style of which was later adapted into French and then English as the pantoum. A pantun consists of rhymed quatrains (abab), with 8-12 syllables per line. The first two lines of each quatrain aren’t meant to have a formal, logical link to the second two lines, although the two halves of each quatrain are supposed to have an imaginative or imagistic connection. Here’s an example:

I planted sweet-basil in mid-field.
Grown, it swarmed with ants,
I loved but am not loved,
I am all confused and helpless.*

The associative leap from the first couplet to the second allows for a great deal of surprise and also helps give the poems are very mysterious and lyrical quality. Try your hand at just one quatrain, or a bunch of them, and see how you do!

* It’s been pointed out that the example doesn’t rhyme, and its syllable count is suspect. All I can say is that it is a translation from a poem in Malay. A transliteration of the original is below–

Tanam selasih di tengah padang,
Sudah bertangkai diurung semut,
Kita kasih orang tak sayang,
Halai-balai tempurung hanyut.

As you can see, in the original, the abab rhyme is present, and the syllable count is right. Our translator appears to have been more concerned with substance than style! At any rate, I apologize for any confusion.

We’re two weeks into NaPoWriMo. I hope it’s going well for you!

Our featured link for the day is From the Fishouse, an online audio archive of readings by emerging poets.

Our featured participant’s blog is Matt Walker, where the poem for Day 11 makes leaps and turns that recreate the thought process, the process of coming together and fading away.

And now, our prompt. Today’s should be fun — I hope. I challenge you to write a persona poem — that is, a poem in the voice of a particular person who isn’t you. But I’d like you to choose a very particular kind of person. How about a poem in the voice of a superhero (or a supervillain)? Comic book characters are very much like mythological characters — they tend to embody big-picture values or personality traits. Good or bad. Loyal or disloyal! (Heck — some comic book characters are mythologial characters — think of Thor). And like mythological characters, superheroes and supervillains let us tap into deep-seated cultural tropes. So go for it. Whether you identify with Batman, Robin or – gulp – the Joker, let’s hear your poems in another voice. Happy writing!

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 13th day of NaPoWriMo!

Our featured link for the day is Rhymezone. Mostly my poems don’t rhyme, but when they do, I often rely on Rhymezone to help me across those tricky lines!

Our featured participant’s blog is Frances McCue’s Blog, where the poem for Day 11 is vaguely threatening and alluring all at once. All I know is, I’m glad I’m not a fictional helpful raccoon.

And now our (totally optional) prompt. Yesterday’s prompt of saying what you’d never say was sort of a doozy — rather emotionally intense, I think, for a lot of you! So for today, let’s relax. Your prompt for today is simply to take a walk. Make notes — mental or otherwise — on what you see on your walk, and incorporate these notes into your poem. A bit more serene and observational than yesterday, and hopefully a nice, calming poem to begin your weekend with. Happy writing!

Welcome to Day 12, everyone!

Our featured link for the day is to NPM Daily, where they are hosting a post by a new poet each day for the month of April.

Our featured participant’s blog for the day is realiction, which took on intellectuals as the target of the “unlovely” poem for the tenth. Hey, I resemble that remark!

And now, the prompt. (Again, the prompt is totally optional). Today’s offering comes to us from Charles Bernstein’s list of poetry experiments. In particular, today I challenge you to “write a poem consisting entirely of things you’d like to say, but never would, to a parent, lover, sibling, child, teacher, roommate, best friend, mayor, president, corporate CEO, etc.” Honesty is the best policy, after all, so get it off your chest! And if you’re interested in the complete list of experiments, you can find them all here.

Happy writing!

Hello, all. We’re now more than one-third of the way through NaPoWriMo, and our we’re up to 1845 participants. Wow!

Our featured link for today is to UbuWeb, which hosts a vast archive of pdfs, sound, and visual files relating to avant-garde poetry. If you’ve never heard any of Christian Bok’s work, go do yourself a favor and check out poetry-as-music-as-beatboxing-as-poetry.

Our featured participant for the day is The Caged Murmurs. The poem for Day 9 wasn’t written in response to yesterday’s prompt, of course, but it really fits the theme! Overall, the poems here display great imagery and attention to emotional detail.

And now, our prompt! Today I challenge you to write a tanka. This, like the “American” cinquain, is a poem based on syllables, with the pattern being 5-7-5-7-7. They work best when those final two 7-syllable lines contain a sort of turn or surprise that the first three lines might not wholly anticipate. You can string a bunch of them together to make a multi-stanza poem, or just write one!

To get you going, here’s an anonymous example from the Japanese, translated by Kenneth Rexroth:

On Komochi Mountain,
from the time the young leaves sprout,
until they turn red,
I think I would like to sleep with you.
What do you think of that?

That one makes me laugh!