Hello all, and welcome back for Day 27 of NaPoWriMo.

Our featured journal today is Literary Orphans, which has published NaPoWriMo-er Charlotte Hamrick. Literary Orphans publishes fiction and non-fiction in addition to poetry, for those of you who are multi-genre writers. Submissions are open year-round.

Our featured participant for Day 27 is katscratching, where the poems display a wry, somewhat mordant, sense of humor, and a multiplicity of lengths and forms.

And now for our prompt! Our early-bird prompt this year (on March 31) was an ekphrastic poem. This is something similar — a poem written from a photograph. There are four below, one of which I hope will catch your fancy. But if you’ve a particular photo in mind that you’d like to use, go right ahead. Happy writing!

Happy last Saturday of NaPoWriMo, everyone.

Our featured journal for the day is Parcel, which will soon publish NaPoWriMo-er Rachel West. Parcel is just lovely-looking, and I’m quite please to make its acquaintance. Turns out some of my favorite poets have been published there, so I just ordered a subscription. And . . . they take submissions year-round.

Today’s featured participant is simple slanting bones, which has some lovely erasure poems, and a great (and appropriately themed) lune from Day 22.

Now for our prompt (optional, as always). Today’s prompt comes to us from Vince Gotera, who wrote his “family member” poem for Day 20 in the form of a curtal sonnet. As Vince explains, the curtal sonnet is shorter than the normal, fourteen line sonnet. Instead it has a first stanza of six lines, followed by a second stanza of four, and then closes with a half-line. The form was invented in the 1800s by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who used it in his famous poem “Pied Beauty”. So for today, I challenge you to give the curtal sonnet a whirl. It doesn’t need to rhyme — though it can if you like — and feel free to branch out beyond iambic pentameter. Happy writing!

Hello, all. This is our final Friday in NaPoWriMo . . . just a few more days to go!

Today’s featured journal is Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, which has published NaPoWriMo-er Vinita Agrawal. Cha focuses on work from and/or about Asia, and is currently accepting submissions for its September 2014 issue.

Today’s featured participant is Retirement Legs, who really got into the spirit of yesterday’s masonry prompt!

And now for our (optional) prompt. Anaphora is a literary term for the practice of repeating certain words or phrases at the beginning of multiple clauses or, in the case of a poem, multiple lines. The phrase “A time to,” as used in the third Chapter of Ecclesiastes, is a good example of anaphora. But you don’t have to be the Old Testament (or a Byrds song) to use anaphora. Allen Ginsberg used it in Howl, for example. This post by Rebecca Hazelton on the Poetry Foundation’s blog gives other great examples of anaphora in action, from Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech to Homer Simpson. So today, I challenge you to write a poem that uses anaphora. Find a phrase, and stick with it — learn how far it can go. Happy writing!

Hello all, and welcome back for Day 24.

Our featured journal for the day is Chantarelle’s Notebook, which has published NaPoWriMo-er Bruce Niedt. Chantarelle’s Notebook is currently accepting submissions for its 34th issue.

Our featured participant today is Into the Headland. The catch-up poem for Day 19 (“Late for the 19th and out of sequins”) has a wonderful first line. I’ll be thinking about that image all day.

And now, our (optional, as always) prompt! Peter Roberts has been participating in NaPoWriMo for several years now at his blog, Masonry Design. He has the charming and odd distinction of having only written poems about masonry. Today, I challenge you to do the same (for one day, at least), and to write a poem that features walls, bricks, stones, arches, or the like. If that sounds a bit hard, remember that one of Robert Frost’s most famous poems was about a wall. Happy writing!

It’s Day 23, everyone. After today, there’s just seven days left to NaPoWriMo!

Today’s featured participant is Gloria D. Gonsalves, whose children’s poem for Day 22 has a lovely kind of off-kilter-ness to it, which recreates the sort of determined but not always logical progression of childhood thoughts.

Our featured journal today is Metazen, which has published NaPoWriMo-er Kevin Sampsell. Metazen publishes new work daily, so submissions are always open. You can check out the submission guidelines here.

Today’s prompt (optional, as always), is an oldie-but-a-goodie: the homophonic translation. Find a poem in a language you don’t know, and translate it into English based on the look of the words and their sounds. For example, here are three lines from a poem by the Serbian poet Vasko Popa:

Posle radnog vremena
Radnici su umorni
Jedva cekaju da stignu u barake

I might translate this into English as

Post-grad eggnog, ramen noodles.
Nikki in the morning,
jacket just stuck with brakes.

That doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it does give me some new words and ideas to play with. Happy writing!

Welcome back, everyone, for Day 22!

Our featured participant for Day 22 is Freckled Writer, whose poem for Day 18 contains some good, bad, and indifferent advice for women and girls, including “You can prevent most problems/ by worrying about them/ before they happen.” I have, unfortunately, been attempting to prevent problems like that since I was born.

Today’s featured journal is Phantom Limb, which has published NaPoWriMo-er Natalie Eilbert. Submissions are currently open; you can see the guidelines here.

And now for our (optional) prompt! Today, I challenge you to write a poem for children. This could be in the style of a nursery rhyme, or take a cue from Edward Lear or Shel Silverstein. It could rhyme — or not. It could be short — or not. Happy writing!

It’s Day 21 — we’re three weeks into NaPoWriMo now.

Our featured participant for Day 21 is Voiceless Fricative, who really went to town on incorporating wacky seashell names into her poem for Day 19.

Today’s featured journal is Drunken Boat, which has published poems by longtime NaPoWriMo-er Reb Livingston. Submissions for both the magazine and the journal’s poetry book contest are open now.

Today’s prompt is to write a “New York School” poem using the recipe found here. The New York School is the name by which a group of poets that all lived in New York in the 1950s and 1960s. The most well-known members are Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and Kenneth Koch. Their poems are actually very different from one another, but many “New York School” poems display a sort of conversational tone, references to friends and to places in and around New York, humor, inclusion of pop culture, and a sense of the importance of art (visual, poetic, and otherwise). Here’s a fairly representative example.

In following the recipe, you can include as many (or as few) of the listed elements as you wish. Happy writing!

We’re now two-thirds of the way through NaPoWriMo. Congratulations to everyone who has made it this far!

Today’s featured participant is Robert Simola, whose poem for Day 18 is full of flowers, bees, and references to Yeats.

Our featured journal today is Finery, an online magazine associated with the small press Birds of Lace, which has been running a special series of poems for April. You can see Finery’s submissions guidelines here.

And now for our (optional) prompt. Today I challenge you to write a poem in the voice of a member of your family. This can be a good way to try to distance yourself from your own experience, without reaching so far away from your own life that it’s hard to come up with specific, realistic details. But watch out! This type of exercise can also dredge up a lot of feelings. So if you think writing in the voice of your grandfather will be too heavy, maybe try the voice of your four-year-old niece. Four-year-old problems might be a little lighter in scope.

Happy writing!

Welcome back for Day 19, everyone.

Our featured journal today is Muzzle Magazine, which has published NaPoWriMo-er and punk rock performance poet William James. Muzzle is open for submissions year-round.

Also! If you have any ideas for featured presses or journals (I’m looking in particular for those that have published (or will soon be publishing) NaPoWriMo participants), please send me your ideas at napowrimonet-AT-gmail-DOT-com!

Today’s featured participant is The Georgia Southern University NaPoWriMo blog.

And now for today’s (optional) prmpt. This is a bit silly, but it’s Saturday. I recently got a large illustrated guide to sea shells. There are some pretty wild names for sea shells. Today I challenge you to take a look at the list of actual sea shell names below, and to use one or more of them to write a poem. You poem doesn’t have to be about sea shells at all — just inspired by one or more of the names.

Peruvian Hat
Snout Otter Clam
Strawberry Top
Incised Moon
Sparse Dove
False Cup-and-Saucer
Leather Donax
Shuttlecock Volva
Striped Engina
Tricolor Niso
Triangular Nutmeg
Shoulderblade Sea Cat
Woody Canoebubble
Ghastly Miter
Heavy Bonnet
Tuberculate Emarginula
Lazarus Jewel Box
Unequal Bittersweet
Atlantic Turkey Wing

Happy writing!

Just twelve days left! I hope your poetry motors are purring.

Today’s featured participant is Dizygotic Poets, where the poems for Day 14 and Day 15 have a sort of post-apocolyptic Old West flair.

Our featured journal today is Sink Review, which has published both Jared White and Becca Klaver, both of whom are posting poems over at the Bloof Books blog. Sink is accepting poetry submissions through December 15.

And now for our prompt (optional, as always). Today I challenge you to write a ruba’i. What’s that? Well, it’s a Persian form — multipe stanzas in the ruba’i form are a rubaiyat, as in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Basically, a ruba’i is a four-line stanza, with a rhyme scheme of AABA. Robert Frost’s famous poem Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening uses this rhyme scheme. You can write a poem composed of one ruba’i, or try your hand at more, for a rubaiyat. Happy writing!