Happy 25^th day of Na/GloPoWriMo, all!

Today’s featured participant is Anna Enbom, who reminds us, in response to Day 24’s “review” prompt, that art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

As we close out our twentieth year, the featured resources for the next few days will take the form of books and chapbooks published by Na/GloPoWriMoers, featuring work first drafted as part of the Na/GloPoWriMo challenge. First, up, we have Vince Gotera’s book The Coolest Month and Elizabeth Boquet’s collection of new and selected poems, Galoshes.

Last but not least, here’s our (optional) prompt for the day. Begin by reading e e cummings’ poem [somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond]. This is a pretty classic love poem, so well-known that it has spawned at least one silly meme. Today’s prompt challenges you to also write a love poem, one that names at least one flower, contains one parenthetical statement, and in which at least some lines break in unusual places.

Happy writing!

(Updated to fix the link to the cummings’ poem!)

Wow! I’m finding it hard to believe this, but as of today, there’s just a week left in Na/GloPoWriMo 2023.

Our featured participant today is Quest for Whirled Peas, where the response to Day 23’s multi-part poem prompt has a lovely, haiku-like sense of present-ness.:

Today, our daily resource is this very strange website that will write you a haiku based on your location. It seems to default to lower east side of Manhattan, but if you click the “locate me” link at the bottom left of the page, it will recenter someplace near you, and then serve you up a haiku. You can also drag the map around using your cursor, to recenter it on a new location.

And now for our (optional) prompt, taken once more from our archives. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem in the form of a review. But not a review of a book or a movie of a restaurant. Instead, I challenge you to write a poetic review of something that isn’t normally reviewed. For example, your mother-in-law, the moon, or the year you were ten years old.

Happy writing!

Welcome back, everyone, for Day 23 of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant for the day is Moment of November, which inverts Emily Dickinson’s “My Nosegays are for Captives” into a lovely verse that takes roses as its starting point.

Our daily resource is African Poems, a website devoted to presenting poetry from Africa, with an emphasis on making oral poetry available to a wide audience through recordings.

Finally, here’s our optional prompt for the day! Start off by reading Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s “Lockdown Garden.” Now, try to write a poem of your own that has multiple numbered sections. Attempt to have each section be in dialogue with the others, like a song where a different person sings each verse, giving a different point of view. Set the poem in a specific place that you used to spend a lot of time in, but don’t spend time in anymore.

Happy writing!

Happy Saturday, all, and happy twenty-second day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

I just couldn’t choose one featured participant for the day, so we have two, both providing responses to Day 20’s “abstraction” prompt. First up is Salovie, with a mysterious meditation on the desert, and second, Christine Smart, with a brief lyric centered on spring blooms.

Today’s featured resource is the Open House poetry radio program. On each program, hosts Cornelius Eady and Patricia Spears Jones interview poets about their new and recent work. You can listen online, or live every Friday on NYC’s WBAI.

Today’s prompt (optional, as always, and taken from our archives) is a variation on a teaching exercise that the poet Anne Boyer uses with students studying the work of Emily Dickinson. As you may know, although Dickinson is now considered one of the most original and finest poets the United States has produced, she was not recognized in her own time. One reason her poems took a while to gain a favorable reception is their slippery, dash-filled lines. Those dashes baffled her readers so much that the 1924 edition of her complete poems replaced some with commas, and did away with others completely. Today’s exercise asks you to do something similar, but in the interests of creativity, rather than ill-conceived “correction.” Find an Emily Dickinson poem – preferably one you’ve never previously read – and take out all the dashes and line breaks. Make it just one big block of prose. Now, rebreak the lines. Add words where you want. Take out some words. Make your own poem out of it! (Not sure where to find some Dickinson poems? You’ll find oodles at the bottom of this page).

Happy writing!

Today we close out the first three weeks of Na/GloPoWriMo! We’ve just nine days left to go until April comes to a close.

Our featured participant today is clayandbranches, where the “future archeology” prompt for Day 20 brings us a lecture from the Cephalopod Academy.

Our daily resource is the BBC’s archive of poetry-related writing, where you’ll find essays and articles aplenty, exploring different poets, poems, and poetic forms.

Last but not least, here’s today’s (optional) prompt. Begin by reading Sarah Gambito’s poem “Grace.” Now, choose an abstract noun from the list below, and then use that as the title for a poem that contains very short lines, and at least one invented word.

Glory
Courage
Anxiety
Failure
Defeat
Delight
Confusion
Calm
Belief
Cleverness
Despair
Honesty
Deceit
Strength

Happy writing!

As of today, we’re 2/3 of the way through Na/GloPoWriMo. I hope you feel like you’re on the downhill slope, coasting towards thirty days of successful poetic endeavor!

Our featured participant today is Catching Lines, where aliens and bears are only some of the remembered terrors provided in response to Day 19’s prompt.

Today’s poetry resource is a little discussion about poetry in bookstores. There are plenty of bookstores around with good poetry sections (two of my favorites are Bridge Street Books in Washington, DC and Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick, Maine). But did you know that there are also a handful of bookstores that only sell poetry? Check out Boston’s Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop, and Seattle’s Open Books.

And now for our (optional) prompt, once more taken from our archives! Have you ever heard someone wonder what future archaeologists, whether human or from alien civilization, will make of us? Today, I’d like to challenge you to answer that question in poetic form, exploring a particular object or place from the point of view of some far-off, future scientist? The object or site of study could be anything from a “World’s Best Grandpa” coffee mug to a Pizza Hut, from a Pokemon poster to a cellphone.

Happy writing!

Happy Wednesday, everyone, and happy nineteenth day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Today’s featured participant is Elizabeth Burnam Poetry, where the abecedarian poem for Day 18 goes all the way down the alphabet and then all the way back up, while mocking corporate discourse.

For today’s daily resource I’d like to share this article about poetry and TikTok. When I first started writing poetry seriously, blogs were the big thing. That was twenty-five years ago, and now there’s poetry Twitter and poetry on Instagram and, yes, as new technology builds atop the old, poetry on TikTok.

And without further ado, here’s our daily (optional) prompt. For this challenge, start by reading Marlanda Dekine’s poem “My Grandma Told Stories or Cautionary Tales.” One common feature of childhood is the monsters. The ones under the bed or in the closet; the odd local monsters that other kids swear roam the creek at night, or that parents say wait to steal away naughty children that don’t go to bed on time. Now, cast your mind back to your own childhood and write a poem about something that scared you – or was used to scare you – and which still haunts you (if only a little bit) today.

Happy (shivery spooky) writing!

Welcome back, everyone, for Day Eighteen of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Today, our featured participant is words & words, where you’ll find a lovely reminiscence on reeds and the wind in response to Day 17’s prompt inviting you to play with repetition and with correspondences between human life and the natural world.

Our daily resource is the YouTube channel of Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room. Here, you can check out more than 100 videos of poetry readings, lectures, and discussions. There’s much to explore!

Finally, here’s our prompt for the day, once again taken from our archives and, as always, optional. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write an abecedarian poem – a poem in which the word choice follows the words/order of the alphabet. You could write a very strict abecedarian poem, in which there are twenty-six words in alphabetical order, or you could write one in which each line begins with a word that follows the order of the alphabet. This is a prompt that lends itself well to a certain playfulness. Need some examples? Try this poem by Jessica Greenbaum, this one by Howard Nemerov or this one by John Bosworth.

Happy writing!

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

Our featured participant for the day is Glenn Mitchell, who brings us a quietly compelling poem in response to Day 16’s “negation” prompt.

Today’s resource is a pair of online reading series. If you’re looking for a regular poetry fix you can enjoy from the comfort of your laptop, why not try the Poets in Pajamas series, which hosts readings every month? Poet and professor Jordan Stempleman also hosts a monthly reading which you can attend online (and you can also access archived videos of past readings). Just click here, and then on “A Common Sense Reading Series” at the top of the page.

And now, for our daily (optional) prompt! Begin by reading Sayuri Ayers’ poem “In the Season of Pink Ladies.” A pretty common piece of writing advice is that poets should know, and use, the precise names for things. Don’t say flower when you can say daisy. Don’t say bird when you mean a hawk. Today’s challenge asks you to write a poem that contains the name of a specific variety of edible plant – preferably one that grows in your area. (That said, if you’re lacking inspiration, online seed catalogs provide a treasure trove of unusual and charming names for vegetables, fruits and flowers. Here’s one to get you started.) In the poem, try to make a specific comparison between some aspect of the plant’s lifespan and your own – or the life of someone close to you. Also, include at least one repeating phrase.

Happy writing!

Happy Sunday, everyone, and welcome back for the sixteenth day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant today is 7eyedwonder, who brings us a sly take on an old French teacher in response to Day 15’s invitation to consider troubling heroes.

Today’s resource is Poetry Northwest’s online collection of essays exploring different poets, craft elements, and styles of poetry.

And now, without further ado, our optional daily prompt, once again pulled from our archives. Today’s prompt is a poem of negation – yes (or maybe, no), I challenge you to write a poem that involves describing something in terms of what it is not, or not like. For example, if you chose a whale as the topic of your poem, you might have lines like “It does not settle down in trees at night, cooing/Nor will it fit in your hand.”

Happy writing!