All good things, even Na/GloPoWriMo, must come to an end. But we’ll be back again next year (and also tomorrow, with our final featured participant!)

Today’s featured participant is 7eyedwonder, where you’ll find a feisty, albatross-themed poem in response to Day 28’s Taylor Swift-themed prompt.

Our final daily resource is this repository of podcasts hosted by the Scottish Poetry Library.

And now for our last prompt of the year – optional, as always! Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which the speaker is identified with, or compared to, a character from myth or legend, as in  Claire Scott’s poem “Scheherazade at the Doctor’s Office.”

Happy writing!

Happy twenty-ninth day of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo, everyone.

We have two featured participants today: Frank Bekker, who brings us a sweet sijo about a cat, and Brittany Mishra, whose poem in response to Day 28’s sijo prompt explores the concept of value.

Today’s daily resource is Poems for These Hours, an Instagram account that shares new poems regularly.

And now for our optional prompt. If you’ve been paying attention to pop-music news over the past couple of weeks, you may know that Taylor Swift has released a new double album titled “The Tortured Poets Department.” In recognition of this occasion, Merriam-Webster put together a list of ten words from Taylor Swift songs. We hope you don’t find this too torturous yourself, but we’d like to challenge you to select one these words, and write a poem that uses the word as its title.

Happy writing!

We’re in the home stretch now, with just three days left to go in this year’s Na/GloPoWriMo!

Today’s featured participant is MellowYellow, which brings us a driving, musical poem in response to Day 27’s American sonnet prompt.

Our featured resource for the day is Harriet Books, the Poetry Foundation’s online website devoted to poetry book reviews, poetry news, and poetry-themed blog poets.

Finally, our optional prompt for the day asks you to try your hand at writing a sijo. This is a traditional Korean verse form. A sijo has three lines of 14-16 syllables. The first line introduces the poem’s theme, the second discusses it, and the third line, which is divided into two sentences or clauses, ends the poem – usually with some kind of twist or surprise.

You could also write a sijo in six lines – at least when it comes to translating classical sijo into English, translators seem to have developed this habit, as you can see from these translations of poems by Jong Mong-Ju and U Tak.

Happy writing!

A very happy twenty-seventh day of Na/GloPoWriMo to you all.

Today, our featured daily participant is Peregrine Buffington, where you’ll not only find a lot of alliteration, consonance, and assonance in response to Day 26’s prompt, but you’ll find it in abecedarian form.

Our featured resource for the day is Poetry Pause, the “daily dispatch” of the League of Canadian Poets.

And now for our prompt – optional, as always!  Today we’d like to challenge you to write an “American sonnet.” What’s that? Well, it’s like a regular sonnet but . . . fewer rules? Like a traditional Spencerian or Shakespearean sonnet, an American sonnet is shortish (generally 14 lines, but not necessarily!), discursive, and tends to end with a bang, but there’s no need to have a rhyme scheme or even a specific meter. Here are a few examples:

• Wanda Coleman’s American Sonnet (10)
• Terence Hayes’s American Sonnet for the New Year
• Ted Berrigan’s Sonnet LXXXVIII

If you’d like more specific instructions for how to get started, Write 253 has a great “formula” prompt for an American sonnet, which you can find here.

Happy writing!

Happy final Friday of Na/GloPoWriMo, everyone!

Our featured participant for the day is Words With Ruth, where we get a dating profile in response to Day 25’s Proust Questionnaire prompt.

Our daily resource is the video archive of the Silo City Reading Series, hosted by the Just Buffalo Literary Center in Buffalo, New York.

And now for our (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that involves alliteration, consonance, and assonance. Alliteration is the repetition of a particular consonant sound at the beginning of multiple words. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds elsewhere in multiple words, and assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds. Traci Brimhall’s poem “A Group of Moths” provides a great example of these poetic devices at work, with each line playing with different sounds that seem to move the poem along on a sonorous wave.

Your poem doesn’t have to be as complex as all that, though. Just pick a consonant or two and a vowel and dive right into the wonderful world (hey, there’s some alliteration/consonance/assonance right there) of sound.

Happy writing!

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?

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!

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!

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!

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!