Look at that! We’re now a whole week into Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant for the day is The Great Unknown, where the line-breaking poem for Day 6 starts off in breathless prose before breaking into a series of sharp, descending lines.

Today we have a new interview, this time with Kyle Dargan, whose fifth book of poetry, Anagnorisis, is being published later this year by Triquarterly/Northwestern University Press. The title of the book, a Greek word that refers to “a startling discovery that produces a change from ignorance to knowledge,” is a good lens through which to view Dargan’s poems, which braid extended metaphors and historical and current world events together to make metaphysical and moral claims in verse. You can read some of Dargan’s recent poems here and here, and our interview with him here.

And now for our (optional) prompt. In our interview, Kyle Dargan suggests writing out a list of all of your different layers of identity. For example, you might be a wife, a grandmother, a Philadelphian, a dental assistant, a rabid Phillies fan, a seamstress, retiree, agnostic, cancer survivor, etc.. These are all ways you could be described or lenses you could be viewed through. Now divide all of those things into lists of what makes you feel powerful and what makes you feel vulnerable. Now write a poem in which one of the identities from the first list contends or talks with an identity from the second list. This might turn out to be kind of a “heavy” exercise, emotionally, but I hope you will find the results enlightening.

Happy writing!

Happy first Friday of Na/GloPoWriMo, all. We hope your poetic momentum is building as we head into our first weekend of the month.

Today’s featured participant is Voyagedesmots, where the photo-plus-translation poem for Day 4 is short, but wonderfully lyrical and beautiful!

We have a new craft resource for you today, consisting of Alberto Ríos’s thoughts on the poetic line. Unless you are writing prose poems, poems have line breaks. Which means we have to decide where we are breaking our lines, and why. I often get into the bad habit, when drafting, of breaking a line just because it looks long in comparison with the other lines in the poem. That’s not a very good reason! While line-breaking is more art than science (sometimes a break just feels right), I’ve been trying to take more time lately to slow down and really think about where a line should break.

And last but not least, here is our prompt for the day (optional, as always). Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that stretches your comfort zone with line breaks. That could be a poem with very long lines, or very short lines. Or a poem that blends the two. You might break to emphasize (or de-emphasize) sounds or rhymes, or to create a moment of hesitation in the middle of a thought. Looking for inspiration? You might take a look at this poem by Lorine Niedecker, this poem by Stanley Kunitz, or this one by Amiri Baraka.

Happy writing!

A very merry fifth day of Na/GloPoWriMo to everyone. We hope your poetic output is chugging along!

Today, our featured participant is words in your eyes, where the abstract-to-concrete poem for Day 4 employs slant rhyme to create a haunting, rolling rhythm.

Our interview today is a two-for-one deal, with responses from both Samar Abdel Jaber and Nicole Callihan, co-authors of Translucence, soon to be out from Indolent Books. In Translucence, Abdel Jaber and Callihan document a dialogue between poets writing in different languages, exploring translation, connection, and photography, all at the same time. You can read an excerpt from the book here, and our interviews with the two authors here.

And now for our (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like the work in Translucence, reacts both to photography and to words in a language not your own. Begin with a photograph. Now find a poem in a language you don’t know (here’s a good place to look!) Ignore any accompanying English translation (maybe cover it up, or cut-and-paste the original into a new document). Now start translating the poem into English, with the idea that the poem is actually “about” your photograph. Use the look and feel of the words in the original to guide you along as you write, while trying to describe your photograph. It will be a bit of a balancing act, but hopefully it will lead to new and beautiful (and possibly very weird) places.

Happy writing!

Happy Wednesday, everyone, and happy fourth day of Na/GloPoWriMo!

Our featured participant today is Napowrimodreamingpath, where the list poem for Day 3 is an abecedarian confection of band names, followed by a second poem inspired by those names!

Today, we bring you a new craft resource, in the form of an essay by Julie Marie Wade on description in poetry. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I write up a first draft, and it is full of trees, and flowers, and skies – but there is no further specificity. What kind of trees? What kind of flowers? Are there clouds in the sky? Even if a poem has a lot of great ideas in it, a reader may find it hard to pay attention if the poems isn’t grounded in details about the real world.

And now for our (optional) daily prompt. Our craft resource today focuses on the use of concrete nouns and specific details, using the idea of “putting a dog in it.” Today, we challenge you to write a poem that is about something abstract – perhaps an ideal like “beauty” or “justice,” but which discusses or describes that abstraction in the form of relentlessly concrete nouns. Adjectives are fine too! For example, you could have a poem about sadness that describes that emotion as “a rowboat tethered with fishing line to a willow that leans over a pond. Rainwater collects in the bottom, and mosquito eggs.” Concrete details like those can draw the reader in and let them imagine the real world where your abstract ideal or feeling happens. Happy writing!

Hello, everyone. We hope your first two days of Na/GloPoWriMo have buoyed your confidence, and that the first Tuesday in the month is treating you well.

Today, our featured participant is fresh poetry, where the “voice” poem for Day 2 has no “I,” but does have a “she,” a “me,” a “they,” and an “us”!

And now for a new interview. Our victim . . . er, interviewee . . . today is Peter Davis, whose fourth book, Band Names & Other Poems, has just been published by Bloof Books. Peter’ work is often humorous, frequently surreal, and sometimes takes you into darker, deeper places than you might think they would go. You can check out a few of his poems here, and read our interview here.

Today’s prompt (optional as always), is inspired by our interview with Peter Davis. As he indicates there, his latest book is rooted in endlessly writing ideas for band names. Today, we challenge you to try this out yourself by writing a list poem in which all the items are made-up names. If band names don’t inspire, how about a list of titles for romantic novels? Or new television cop dramas? They can be as over-the-top as you like, because that’s (at least) half the fun. Happy writing!

Welcome back, everyone, for Day Two of Na/GloPoWriMo. We hope yesterday only whetted your appetite for poetry!

Our featured participant today is this and other poems, where the poem for Day One evokes mystery, sadness, and danger.

Today we are presenting you with a new craft resource, an essay by Katie Rensch on the poetic “I” – you know, that mysterious self who sometines speaks in your poems. Rensch discusses how the use of the first-person voice affects a poem, and how the poet can draw the reader in or push them away by the selection of a voice, and how even within the first-person voice, both the identity and complexity of voice can change.

And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Taking a cue from our craft resource, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that plays with voice. For example, you might try writing a stanza that recounts something in the first-person, followed by a stanza recounting the same incident in the second-person, followed by a stanza that treats the incident from a third-person point of view. Or you might try a poem in the form of a dialogue, which necessarily has two “I” speakers, addressing two “you”s. Another way to go is to take an existing poem of yours or someone else’s, and try rewriting it in a different voice. The point is just to play with who is speaking to who and how. Happy writing!

Hello, all! It’s the first day of Na/GloPoWriMo! We hope you’re all ready to start writing, and excited about the prospect of winding up with thirty poems at the end of the month.

As usual, we’ll keep the “Submit Your Site” form open through the end of the month, so even if you get started late, or only start posting poems online midway through the month, you can have your website posted. And of course, if you’re not planning to post poems, that’s fine too!

This year, as usual, we’ll be featuring a new participant each day. Today’s participant is Theobald Walrus, who, in addition to having a wonderful blog name, has a charmingly tricksy riddle poem, following our early-bird prompt!

In past years, we’ve also pointed you to a poetry resource, such as poems by poets in translation, new journals, etc. This year, we’ll be featuring a mix of craft resources and interviews that we’ve conducted with poets who have new books out or forthcoming. Our first interview with with Lauren Russell, whose book, What’s Hanging on the Hush is just out from Ahsahta Press. Lauren’s work seamlessly blends pop culture, high culture, and personal accounts, leavened with flashes of dry wit. You can find a selection of poems from the book here, and you can read our mini-interview with her here. In the interview, you’ll find answers to questions on how Lauren got started writing poetry, the best (and worst) writing advice she’s received, and a generative, collaborative poetry exercise.

And last but not least, here is our (optional, as always) prompt for the day. It’s based off of Lauren Russell’s collaborative poetry exercise. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that is based on a secret shame, or a secret pleasure. It could be eating too many cookies, or bad movies, or the time you told your sister she could totally brush her teeth with soap. It’s up to you. Happy writing!

Happy Na/GloPoWriMo Eve, everyone! I hope you have brought the traditional accoutrements of the holiday, including sharpened pencils, new notebooks, freshly opened Word documents, and a readiness to versify.

Our craft resource today is a short article featuring fifteen poets’ thoughts on revision. While our focus during Na/GloPoWriMo is on first drafts, revision is a big part of the poetic process, and one that everyone struggles with. Hopefully, this will give you food for thought and inspiration as you tackle editing your work.

And now for a bit about timing! As in prior years, each day’s post and (optional) prompt will go live at midnight eastern standard time. However, because April 1 comes earlier to some parts of the globe than others, we also have an early bird prompt for those of you for whom the day is well-advanced before we even get to the witching hour here on the east coast.

Today’s prompt is one we’ve used before, but it gets great results, and who can argue with results? So today I’d like to challenge you to write a poem in the form of a love letter . . . to an object. Ideally, the poem will be a kind of riddle, where it’s not totally obvious that the addressee is your beloved childhood pogo stick, or a dish of pad thai from your favorite restaurant, until near the end. This is a great opportunity to play with some of the clichés and tropes of love poetry. But while this kind of poem can be a great way to explore humor in verse, you might also surprise yourself with just how deep and true your feelings toward an object can be. Happy writing!

{UPDATE}

For those of you who would like to use them, we have developed some “blog buttons.” See below!

Hello, all. We have just two days to go until Na/GloPoWriMo. Can you smell it in the air? Sort of like fresh ink and old paperbacks…

We’re now up to hundreds of participants with websites where they’ll be posting their work. I always enjoy peeking at other people’s progress, and finding inspiration there. Once April gets started, perhaps you’ll do the same?

In the meantime, here is another craft resource for your perusal. In his essay, Got Poetry?, Jim Holt discusses the practice of memorizing poetry. I memorized a lot of poetry as a child, and have found it wonderful not just for entertaining myself at bus stops (we didn’t always have iPhones), but because it creates a sort of mental index of the sounds of poetry — rhythms and beats and ways of expression that I can consult when writing without having to stop and go look something up.

Hello, everybody. There are just three days left until National/Global Poetry Writing Month begins! There are lots of programs out there for training people to run races – I wonder what a training program for writing 30 poems would look like? Probably lots of time spent reviewing your favorite books of poetry, tossing off practice rhymes, and listening to “Eye of the Tiger” repeatedly. That last one seems to work for training for anything!

New participants’ sites are being added to our list every day, and we’ll keep those submissions open throughout the month of April. But I’d also like to give a shoutout to all of those who will be writing, but who won’t be posting your poems online. You are also part of Na/GloPoWriMo!

Our craft resource for the day is an essay by the poet Mark Strand (scroll down to “from ‘Notes on the Craft of Poetry’”). Strand is skeptical of the idea of “craft,” resisting the idea that you can build a poem like a car, just by having the right parts and the right know-how. Strand advocates for a bit of the mystical and the personal in poetry. While he doesn’t deny that there is a “way of doing” poetry, he believes that the way is unique to each poet, and must be discovered through practice. And we’re all about practice here!