Wow, everyone! It’s April 15 already? It’s hard to believe, but we’re halfway through Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant today is like mercury colliding, where the homophone/homonym/homograph prompt resulted in a rollicking adventure in doubled spellings, meanings and sounds. You really do have to read it out loud to make sense of it! And the play between the sound and the spelling means that many of the phrases seem to say one thing while undermining or complicating that meaning at the same time.

Today’s video poetry resource is this tutorial on how to read a poem out loud – really, how to perform it, as if it were a monologue in a play. Lots of people have bad memories of being forced to memorize and recite poems in school. Me? I was the nerd who volunteered to do it for extra credit. Alas, my subsequent dramatic recitation of “Paul Revere’s Ride” to my fellow seventh graders did nothing to improve my social standing. Seventh graders are a tough crowd!

Our prompt for today (optional, as always), takes its inspiration from the idea of a poem as a sort of tiny play, which can be performed dramatically. In the 1800s, there was quite a fad for monologue-style poems that lend themselves extremely well to dramatic interpretations (this kind of work was basically Robert Browning’s jam). And Shakespeare’s plays are chock-a-block with them. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write your own dramatic monologue. It doesn’t have to be quite as serious as Browning or Shakespeare, of course, but try to create a sort of specific voice or character that can act as the “speaker” of your poem, and that could be acted by someone reciting the poem.

Happy writing!

Today marks the two-week point of Na/GloPoWriMo. We hope you are all feeling the power of poetry!

Today’s featured participant is ARHtistic License, where the “spooky” prompt for Day Thirteen resulted in a poem that revels in the magic of the imagination.

Our video resource for the day is this recording of Taylor Mali reciting/performing his poem “The The Impotence of Proofreading.” We’ve saved this video for a weekend day because while it is quite funny, well, it’s not entirely safe for work.

Our prompt for the day (optional as always) takes its inspiration from Mali’s poem. As he shows us, there many words in English that sound like other words. For that matter, English has lots of words that look like other words, Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that incorporates homophones, homographs, and homonyms, or otherwise makes productive use of English’s ridiculously complex spelling rules and opportunities for mis-hearings and mis-readings.

Hoppy wrothing!

Welcome back, everyone, for the thirteenth day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant today is Manja Mexi Moving, where the dull/precious thing prompt for Day Twelve gave rise to a sly and supple poem.

Today’s poetry-related video, in honor of the supposed unluckiness and general spookiness of the number 13, features Jack Prelutsky’s poem “The Witch,” as read by a woman who is really getting into it! Cackling, shrieking, the works.

Our optional prompt for the day takes its cue from Prelutsky’s poem, as well as this poem by Dean Young, called “Belief in Magic.” Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem about something mysterious and spooky! Your poem could be about something that is mysterious and spooky in a bad way (like a witch), or mysterious and spooky in a good way (possibly also like a witch? It depends on the witch, I guess!) Or just the everyday, mysterious, spooky quality of being alive.

Happy writing!

Happy Friday, everyone, and happy twelfth day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant today is Napowrimo ’19, where the origin poem for Day Eleven is a moving ode to horses, and to the power of reading.

Today’s video resource is this short film called What Makes a Poem a Poem? That’s a difficult question for even poets to answer! Is it rhyme? Is it imagery? Is it line breaks? None of the above? All of the above? Well, if nothing else, this film assures us that whatever poetry may be, writing a poem is an essentially human act.

And last but not least, here’s our daily (optional) prompt! This one is based on a dream that the poet Natalie Eilbert had. In the dream, she was taking a poetry workshop in which each student had to bring in two objects from home – one significant and one dull. The students then had to give away or destroy the significant object, and write a poem about loving the dull thing. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem about a dull thing that you own, and why (and how) you love it. Alternatively, what would it mean to you to give away or destroy a significant object?

Happy writing!

Hello, all, and happy second Thursday of Na/GloPoWriMo 2019!

Today, our featured participant is sandee woodside, where the regional weather is . . . menacing.

Our video resource for today is this animated version of Safia Elhillo’s “To Make Use of Water,” a poem intimately concerned with translation, both in the sense of moving between languages, but also in the sense of moving between places and feelings, of having two homes and none.

Our optional prompt for today is based on another poem of Elhillo’s, called “Origin Stories.” Like “To Make Use of Water,” this poem struggles to make sense of the distance between the poet’s beginnings, her point of origin, and her present self. Have you ever heard the phrase, “you can’t go home again?” This poem is about that.

Today, taking a leaf from Elhillo’s work, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem of origin. Where are you from? Not just geographically, but emotionally, physically, spiritually? Maybe you are from Vikings and the sea and diet coke and angry gulls in parking lots. Maybe you are from gentle hills and angry mothers and dust disappearing down an unpaved road. And having come from there, where are you now?

Happy (or at the very least, emotionally engaged) writing!

How about that, everyone? Today we are one-third of the way through Na/GloPoWriMo 2019!

Today’s featured participant is Small Burdens, where Day Nine’s Sei Shonagons-style prompt resulted in two lovely lists of “Things That Pull Asunder” and Things That Bind.”

Our video resource for today is this recording of Randy Rieman reading a poem at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering. Perhaps you did not know that cowboy poetry exists, much less that there is a big conference for it each year? Well, hang on to your six-gallon hats, because Mr. Rieman is about to blow you away with his rendition of this S. Omar Barker poem, which is awash in regional and dialect phrasing.

Our prompt for the day (optional, as always), is also rooted in dialect and regional phrasing. In her poem “Sunshower,” Natalie Shapero finds inspiration in a rather colorful phrase used in Mississippi and Alabama to describe the situation in which it rains while the sun is shining.

Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that starts from a regional phrase, particularly one to describe a weather phenomenon. You may remember one from growing up, bu if you’re having trouble getting started, perhaps one of these regional U.S. phrases used to describe warm weather will inspire you. Or you might enjoy these French terms for cold weather, or even these expressions from the British Isles that are mostly for the very British phenomenon of rain.

Happy writing!

Hello, all, and happy ninth day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Today, our featured participant is MD Kerr, where the business jargon for Day Eight produced a hallucinatory excursion into the language of companies advertising specialty tile. We know how exciting that sounds, but trust us.

Our video for the day is this BBC film of a poem called “The British.” When the sun never sets on your empire, you wind up with a lot of varied cuisine! Keep your eyes peeled for the cameo by a Roman centurion. Perhaps he’s going to check on Hadrian’s Wall?

Our (optional) prompt for the day asks you to engage in another kind of cross-cultural exercise, as it is inspired by the work of Sei Shonagon, a Japanese writer who lived more than 1000 years ago. She wrote a journal that came to be known as The Pillow Book. In it she recorded daily observations, court gossip, poems, aphorisms, and musings, including lists with titles like “Things That Have Lost Their Power,” “Adorable Things,” and “Things That Make Your Heart Beat Faster.” Today, https://www.wildstrawberrylodge.com/three-days-left/ I’d like to challenge you to write your own Sei Shonagon-style list of “things.” What things? Well, that’s for you to decide!

Happy writing!

Welcome back, everyone, for the second week of Na/GloPoWriMo!

Our featured participant today is Poem Dive, where Day Eight’s prompt of gifts and joy is full of sensory detail. I can feel the sunlight!

Our video resource today is this short film version of Maggie Smith’s poem, “Good Bones.” (The full text of the poem is available on the page, as well). You may have heard this poem before. In an age when poetry sometimes seems like the most disregarded of arts, it went “viral” in 2016, as recounted in this article from The Washington Post. The reception of “Good Bones” is a potent reminder that poetry is a vibrant method for understanding the world, and understanding what we want from it, and from each other.

Our prompt for the day (optional, as always), is inspired by Smith’s poem. You may have noted that the central metaphor of “Good Bones” turns on a phrase used by real estate agents. Today, I’d like to challenge you to think about the argot of a particular job or profession, and see how you can incorporate it into a metaphor that governs or drives your poem. This rather astonishing list of professional slang terms might help you get into the mood. Or, if you work a white-collar job, perhaps you can take inspiration from one of the business jargon phrases that seem to predominate in corporate environments (leveraging diverse synergies, anyone?)

Happy writing!

Hello, everyone, and welcome back. Today marks the one-week mark for Na/GloPoWriMo 2019! We hope you feel like you’re hitting your stride with this whole write-a-poem-every-day thing.

Our featured participant today is Garten der Gedichte, where the poem of the possible for Day 6 shows that poetry can happen even amidst distractions.

Today’s poetry resource is another TED talk, this one from Rachel McKibbens, on “Poetry as Therapy.” Now, if you’ve ever been in a creative writing class, you might have been told that poetry isn’t therapy, and shouldn’t be written as such. But one of the reasons people don’t just make art, but actively seek it out, is that by hearing or seeing other people express feelings similar to our own, we feel more human and less alone.

Our prompt for the day (optional, as always) is also inspired by McKibbens, who posted these thoughts on her Twitter account a few months back:

What do you deserve? Name it. All of it. What are you ready to let go of? Name that too. Then name the most gentle gift for yourself. Name the brightest song your body’s ever held. Summon joy like you would a child; call it home. It wanders, yes. But it’s still yours.

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem of gifts and joy. What would you give yourself, if you could have anything? What would you give someone else?

Happy writing!

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!