Well, we all knew this was coming. It’s the last day of NaPoWriMo 2015! Congratulations to everyone who made it through the month. And if you didn’t quite get to 30 poems, don’t worry – there’s always next year!

Our final featured participant is Moonbows and Sundogs, where the review poem for Day 29 seems to place us somewhere beyond mere opinions.

And today’s poetry resource is Coldfront, an online journal of poetry, reviews, essays, and more. You might be interested, for example, in their Poets Off Poetry feature, where poets write about their favorite albums.

And now for our final prompt (still optional!). For the last day of NaPoWriMo, I’d like you to try an odd little exercise that I have had good results with. Today, I challenge you to write a poem backwards. Start with the last line and work your way up the page to the beginning. Another way to go about this might be to take a poem you’ve already written, and flip the order of the lines and from there, edit it so the poem now works with its new order. This will probably feel a bit strange (and really, it is a bit strange), but it just may help you see the formal “opening” and “closing” strategies of your poems in a new way!

Happy writing!

It’s the penultimate day of NaPoWriMo! (I’ve always liked the word penultimate).

Our featured participant today is Bonespark, where the bridge from Day 28’s poem is just a piece of string.

Today’s poetry resource is Poem in Your Pocket Day. Held annually since 2002, this year PiYP Day is April 30. (I thought I would feature the project today to give you time to find poems for your pockets).

And now, for our prompt (optional, as always): today, I challenge you to write a poem in the form of a review. You can review either animate or inanimate things, real places or imaginary places. You can write in the style of an online review (think Yelp) or something more formal that you might find in a newspaper or magazine. (I imagine that bad reviews of past boyfriends/girlfriends might be an easy way to get into this prompt, though really, you can “review” anything in your poem, from summer reading lists for third graders to the idea of the fourth dimension).

Happy writing!

It’s the final Tuesday of NaPoWriMo, and we have just three days left in the month. I hope you’ve gotten your poetical “second wind.”

And we have two featured participants today, because I just couldn’t pick! First, Yoga Mom’s hay(na)ku lament for unseasonable weather, and then Summer Blues, where there are two poems, a single noir-ish hay(na)ku, and then a three-stanza variant, which I found very evocative.

Today’s poetry resource is Lemonhound, where you’ll find poems, reviews, poetics and craft essays, and more.

And now for today’s prompt (optional, as always). Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem about bridges. A bridge is a powerful metaphor, and when you start looking for bridges in poems, you find them everywhere. Your poem could be about a real bridge or an imaginary or ideal bridge. It could be one you cross every day, or one that simply seems to stand for something larger – for the idea of connection or distance, for the idea of movement and travel and new horizons.

Happy writing!

Just four days left now – we’re almost to the finish line.

Our featured participant today is EmmaJewel, where the persona poem for Day 26 is also a calligramme!

Today, our featured resource is the Academy of American Poets’ postcard archive, where you’ll find advice to young poets and some oddball summer ephemera, all written in postcard form.

And today’s prompt – optional, as always — comes to us from Vince Gotera. It’s the hay(na)ku). Created by the poet Eileen Tabios and named by Vince, the hay(na)ku is a variant on the haiku. A hay(na)ku consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two words, and the third line has three words. You can write just one, or chain several together into a longer poem. For example, you could write a hay(na)ku sonnet, like the one that Vince himself wrote back during NaPoWriMo 2012!

Happy writing!

Happy Sunday, everyone!

Our featured participant today is Linda Kruschke’s Blog, where the clerihew for Day 25 rather cleverly forces you to complete the final rhyme.

Today’s featured poetry resource is The Volta, where you’ll find new poems, video poems, interviews, craft and critical essays, reviews, and more!

I also wanted to give a shout-out today to a project created by Gloria D. Gonsalves, who has been participating in NaPoWriMo for many years. It’s World Children’s Poetry Day, taking place this year on October 3. Keep your eye on the website as autumn rolls around! Perhaps you might consider organizing an event in your community?

And now, for our prompt (optional, as always). Our last two prompts have been squarely in the silly zone – this one should give some scope to both the serious-minded and the silly among you. Today, I challenge you to write a persona poem – a poem in the voice of someone else. Your persona could be a mythological or fictional character, a historical figure, or even an inanimate object. Need some examples? Check out this persona-poem-themed issue of Poemeleon from a few years back.

Happy writing!

Hello, everyone! We’re really starting to wind down now. I’ll miss this – and you!

Today’s featured participant is From the Corner Out, where the parody for Day 24 updates “The Road Not Taken” for the cell-phone era.

Our featured poetry resource today is The Favorite Poem Project, the online presence of a large-scale effort spearheaded by former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky, to foster interest in poetry by collecting and showcasing Americans’ favorite poems. You’ll find videos of people reading their favorite poems, along with text of the poems themselves, as well as information about the history of the project and the various books, DVDs and other materials that it has engendered.

And now for our prompt (optional, as always)! It’s the weekend, so I’d thought we might go with something short and just a bit (or a lot) silly – the Clerihew. These are rhymed, humorous quatrains involving a specific person’s name. You can write about celebrities, famous people from history, even your mom (hopefully she’s got a good name for rhyming with).

Happy writing!

It’s the final Friday of NaPoWriMo!

Our featured participant today is J Luukkonen Poetry, where the six of spades from Day 23’s card-based prompt becomes six spades digging the earth.

Today’s featured resource is the The Library of Congress’ Poetry Resource Page, which will guide you in exploring the poetry-related content of the library’s website. You can find all kinds of things, including the state poem of Tennessee, the emo love poems of a teenage George Washington, and other wonders and oddities.

Our prompt today (optional, as always), will hopefully provide you with a bit of Friday fun. Today, I challenge you to write a parody or satire based on a famous poem. It can be long or short, rhymed or not. But take a favorite (or unfavorite) poem of the past, and see if you can’t re-write it on humorous, mocking, or sharp-witted lines. You can use your poem to make fun of the original (in the vein of a parody), or turn the form and manner of the original into a vehicle for making points about something else (more of a satire – though the dividing lines get rather confused and thin at times).

Happy writing!

Hello, everyone! There’s just one week left now! I hope your poetry muscles are keeping pace.

Today, our featured participant is Graceful Poetry Press, where the Earth Day poem for Day 22 has both gratitude and a sense of melancholy.

Our poetry resource for the day is From the Fishhouse, an audio archive of emerging poets. Here, you’ll find a host of interviews with poets, as well as recordings of poets reading their work.

And now for today’s prompt (optional, as always). Today, I challenge you to take a chance, literally. Find a deck of cards (regular playing cards, tarot cards, uno cards, cards from your “Cards Against Humanity” deck – whatever), shuffle it, and take a card – any card! Now, begin free-writing based on the card you’ve chosen. Keep going without stopping for five minutes. Then take what you’ve written and make a poem from it. (Hat tip to Amy McDaniel for the idea!)

Happy writing!

Hello, all, and welcome back for the 22nd day of NaPoWriMo!

Our featured participant for the day is: Alphabet Salad, where the erasure poem for Day 21 comes out of a page from Walden.

Today’s poetry resource is Empty Mirror, an online literary review. The site, which started out as focused on Beat Generation writing, now publishes new poems, book reviews, interviews and more!

And now for (as always, optional) prompt! Today is Earth Day, so I would like to challenge you to write a “pastoral” poem. Traditionally, pastoral poems involved various shepherdesses and shepherds talking about love and fields, but yours can really just be a poem that engages with nature. One great way of going about this is simply to take a look outside your window, or take a walk around a local park. What’s happening in the yard and the trees? What’s blooming and what’s taking flight?

Happy writing!

Hello, all. Today marks the end of the third week of NaPoWriMo. We’re getting near the finish line now!

Today’s featured participant is Whimsygizmo, where the “I know” poem has a restless sort of melancholy, the sense of taking stock and summing up before continuing on.

And our poetry resource for the day is Leslie D.’s NaPoWriMo poet interviews. Blogger Leslie D. is not just writing poems each day for NaPoWrimo; she’s interviewing a poet every day!

Our prompt for today (optional, as always) is an old favorite – the erasure! This involves taking a pre-existing text and blacking out or erasing words, while leaving the placement of the remaining words intact. I’ve been working on an erasure project that involves an old guide to rose-growing. Here’s an example of an original page, side-by-side with my “erased” page:

One easy way to get started is just to photocopy a page from a book or magazine, and black out words. Or you can copy a text into Microsoft Word, and turn the words you don’t want white. Erasures can feel almost like a game – carving new poems out of old texts like carving statues from blocks of marble — and so they take some of the anxiety out of writing. They can also lead to surprising new ideas, as the words of the original text are given new contexts.

Happy writing!