Hello, everyone! While the Ides of March might have been a baleful date for Julius Caesar, for us it means we’re that much closer to April 1 and the start of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo.

In the meantime, if you’re chomping at the bit for some prompts, why not check out some online prompt generators, like the one here, and the one here? Or if you’re looking for something a bit more strange to inspire you, maybe feed the URL for a random Wikipedia entry into The Eater of Meaning (an online program that “nonsensifies” the words of individual webpages. Some of the resulting phrases may give you inspiration for a poem!).

We’ll have some other poetry resources to share with you as March winds down, and we start gearing up for April in earnest. In the meantime, please remember that you can follow our prompts and other posts on Facebook and on Twitter (@napowrimo2023).

Hello, everyone!

It may be hard to believe that we’re starting March already, but we are. And that means that National/Global Poetry Writing Month is just 30 days away! Haven’t heard of Na/GloPoWriMo? Well, this is your opportunity, whether you’re a published poet, a beginner, or just someone who loves a challenge, to try your hand at writing a poem a day for the month of April.

How does it work? Simple — just write a poem every day from April 1 to April 30. If you’ll be posting your efforts to a blog or other internet space this year, you can submit the link using our “Submit Your Site” form, and your website will show up in our “Participants’ Sites” list.

And if you’re not planning to post your work online? No worries! Na/GloPoWriMo doesn’t require that at all. All you have to day is write a poem a day for April.

As in prior years, we’ll be posting an optional daily prompt to help you get inspired. In honor of the 20^th anniversary of Na/GloPoWriMo, we’ll be digging into our prompt archives to show off some of the best prompts from past years. That said, there will also be some new prompts as well!

We’ll also be featuring a different participant each day, as well as a daily poetry-related resource.

For those of you that would like buttons/badges to post on your blogs or websites to show your participation, here is this year’s crop!:

And a hint for those of you who would like to communicate with fellow Na/GloPoWriMo-ers — if you click on the title to each day’s post, you’ll find that the title is a link that will take you to a page specific to that day’s post, with a comment section. This is a great place to post links to your daily output during Na/GloPoWriMo, and to find other participants’ poems.

We’ll be back on the 15th of March, as we build up to our count-down to April 1! And if you have questions in the meantime, please contact us at napowrimonet AT gmail DOT com.

Hello, all! We’re getting ready to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Na/GloPoWriMo this April. Wow!

As usual, we’ll have a prompt every day for you, a featured participant, and this year, we’re also hoping to feature a book or chapbook every day that contains poems written during previous Na/GloPoWriMos. And to do that, we need your help! If you have a published book or chapbook containing poems that were initially drafted as part of Na/GloPoWriMo, please let us know about them by sending an email to napowrimonet-AT-gmail-DOT-com! We hope to show off a good cross-section of participants’ work this way.

We’ll be back on March 1 with some buttons and other information. In the meantime, please do send us links to your books and we hope you will start getting ready to flex your poem-writing-muscles this April.

Another April gone, another Na/GloPoWriMo in the books! Thanks to everyone who participated. It’s so heartening to see the many folks who return year after year, as well as each year’s crop of fresh, new participants willing to spend their Aprils writing poetry.

And my special thanks go out to everyone who cheered on other participants in the comments on each day’s post, on Facebook, and on Twitter! The community that you create and foster is truly special, and I’m beyond grateful that you give your time and enthusiasm to making Na/GloPoWriMo a welcoming place for all.

Our final featured participants for the year are Farah Lawal Harris, who brings us a blazing hip-hop cento, written by e.s., who provides a lyrically lush cento of gratitude, and finally, Gloria D. Gonsalves, who wrote not one, but two centos in response to our final prompt.

All of this year’s posts and comments will remain up and available for your perusal, and I will leave this year’s list of participants’ site up until we begin our housecleaning early next year in anticipation of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo 2022 — which will be the project’s twentieth year! I can hardly believe how it’s grown since 2003, when it was just me writing poems by myself in my bedroom, to the present day, when there are participants all around the world!

See you next April! And in the meantime, happy writing!

Well, it’s happened again, everyone. We’ve gotten to the final day of another Na/GloPoWriMo! We’ll be back tomorrow with a post to laud our final, featured participant, but in the meantime, let’s get to it!

Today, we have another trio of featured participants. First up, here’s Backwoods Walking‘s lyrical and nostalgic response to Day 29’s “gifts” prompt, and second and third, rather humorous responses from Graham Parker’s Poetry and Poetic Inquiry for Beginners.

Our final featured online magazine is Freeze Ray, which specializes in poems about pop culture. From their most recent issue, I’ll point you to Thomas Fucaloro’s “Into the Spider-verse Deleted Character: Charles Baudelaire Parker, the Loathsome Spiderman” and Heather Knowles’ “Wow (Or, the Time I Served Owen Wilson Coffee).”

And now – our final (but still optional!) prompt. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a cento. This is a poem that is made up of lines taken from other poems. If you’d like to dig into an in-depth example, here’s John Ashbery’s cento “The Dong with the Luminous Nose,” and here it is again, fully annotated to show where every line originated. A cento might seem like a complex undertaking – and one that requires you to have umpteen poetry books at your fingertips for reference – but you don’t have to write a long one. And a good way to jump-start the process is to find an online curation of poems about a particular topic (or in a particular style), and then mine the poems for good lines to string together. You might look at the Poetry Foundation’s collection of love poems, or its collection of poems by British romantic poets, or even its surprisingly expansive collection of poems about (American) football.

Happy writing!

Happy Friday all, and happy penultimate day of Na/GloPoWriMo 2022!

For the first time, we have a trio of featured participants, as there were so many wonderful responses to Day 28’s “concrete” poem prompt that I had even more difficulty than usual choosing! First up, here’s Alice Whitehead‘s lovely pear-shaped poem. Nex, Joy Wright‘s criss-crossing, repeating poem about a bandstand, and last but not least, flippedserendipity‘s wavy ocean poem.

Today’s featured online magazine is On the Seawall, which has been publishing issues at least monthly since 2018. From the poems they’ve recently published, I’ll direct you to Barbara Daniels’ “My Lost Generation” and Melissa Eleftherion’s “Fool Reversed/Let Go.”

And here’s our prompt (optional, as always). In certain versions of the classic fairytale Sleeping Beauty, various fairies or witches are invited to a princess’s christening, and bring her gifts. One fairy/witch, however, is not invited, and in revenge for the insult, lays a curse on the princess. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem in which you muse on the gifts you received at birth — whether they are actual presents, like a teddy bear, or talents – like a good singing voice – or circumstances – like a kind older brother, as well as a “curse” you’ve lived with (your grandmother’s insistence on giving you a new and completely creepy porcelain doll for every birthday, a bad singing voice, etc.). I hope you find this to be an inspiring avenue for poetic and self-exploration.

Happy writing!

There’s only three days left to go in this year’s Na/GloPoWriMo. I hope you’ve had – and are having – fun with the challenge.

Today’s featured participant is yet again, two participants! First up, we have Eunoia, bringing us a duplex that I certainly found meaningful, having grown up as a navy brat (and moving every six to twelve months as a result), and second, Karen Morris, bringing us a fully-rhymed duplex in the form of a mother’s humorous lament.

Our daily online magazine is failbetter. Among the poems that they’ve published recently, I’ll point out Jessie Raymundo’s “Memory with Water” and John Wall Barger’s “I Received a Bitter Email from a Good-Hearted Man.”

Today’s (optional) prompt is to write a concrete poem. Like acrostic poems, concrete poems are a favorite for grade-school writing assignments, so this may not be your first time at the concrete-poem rodeo. In brief, a concrete poem is one in which the lines are shaped in a way that mimics the topic of the poem. For example, May Swenson’s poem “Women” mimics curves, reinforcing the poem’s references to motion, rocking horses, and even the shape of a woman’s body. George Starbuck’s “Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree” is – you guessed it – a sonnet in the shape of a potted Christmas tree. Your concrete poem could be complexly-shaped, but relatively simple strategies can also be “concrete” —  like a poem involving a staircase where the length of the lines grows or shrinks over time, like an ascending (or descending) set of stairs.

Happy writing!

Happy Wednesday, all, and welcome back for the twenty-seventh day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant for the day is, again, two featured participants! While the poems may have seemed difficult to write, the responses to Day 27’s “homeric similes” prompt were really quite amazing. Pat yourselves on your collective backs — extended metaphors suit you down to the ground. And now, without further ado, our participants! First up, we have Vixie’s Stories, bringing the jungle into an urban setting. Second, we have Poetry by Hasen, bringing us a wintry and wandering simile.

Today’s featured online magazine is Wood Cat Review, a relatively new magazine that focuses on poetry and other forms of writing about the natural world. From the work that they have published so far, I’ll point you to William Doreski’s “Toads in Early Spring” and Christian Ward’s “The Judges of Wandle River.”

Last but not least, here’s our (optional) prompt. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a “duplex.” A “duplex” is a variation on the sonnet, developed by the poet Jericho Brown. Here’s one of his first “Duplex” poems, and here is a duplex written by the poet I.S. Jones. Like a typical sonnet, a duplex has fourteen lines. It’s organized into seven, two-line stanzas. The second line of the first stanza is echoed by (but not identical to) the first line of the second stanza, the second line of the second stanza is echoed by (but not identical to) the first line of the third stanza, and so on. The last line of the poem is the same as the first.

Happy writing!

Wow, we’re really into the home-stretch of Na/GloPoWriMo now, with just five days left to go!

We again have two featured participants for the day! First, A Poet’s Vision brings us a healing and watery response to Day 25’s “aisling” prompt, while Arti Jain brings us a poem that blends gardening and philosophy.

Our featured online magazine for today is Longleaf Review, which has been publishing quarterly issues since the fall of 2018. From their recent issues, I’ll point you to Sara Elkamel’s “A Bride for a Flood” and Jad Josey’s “Not Bruise, Not Eggplant.”

And now for our daily prompt (optional, as always). A couple of days ago, we played around with hard-boiled similes. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that contains at least one of a different kind of simile – an epic simile. Also known as Homeric similes, these are basically extended similes that develop over multiple lines. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they have mainly been used in epic poems, typically as decorative elements that emphasize the dramatic nature of the subject (see, by way of illustration, this example from Milton’s Paradise Lost). But you could write a complete poem that is just one lengthy, epic simile, relying on the surprising comparison of unlike things to carry the poem across. And if you’re feeling especially cheeky, you could even write a poem in which the epic simile spends lines heroically and dramatically describing something that turns out to be quite prosaic. Whatever you decide to compare, I hope you have fun extending your simile(s) to epic lengths.

Happy writing!

Happy twenty-fifth day of Na/GloPoWriMo, everybody!

Today, our featured participant is two participants, yet agains: Jacqui Dempsey-Cohen and Amita Paul, both of wrote poems chock-a-block with extemely vivid similes in response to Day 24’s “hard-boiled” prompt.

Our featured online journal for the day is Okay Donkey, which has been publishing poetry (as well as other genres) monthly since June of 2018. From their recent issues, I’ll point you to Audrey Hall’s “Old Man in the Kitchen,” and Amorak Huey’s “A Small, Private Sadness.”

Today’s (optional) prompt is based on the aisling, a poetic form that developed in Ireland. An aisling recounts a dream or vision featuring a woman who represents the land or country on/in which the poet lives, and who speaks to the poet about it. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that recounts a dream or vision, and in which a woman appears who represents or reflects the area in which you live. Perhaps she will be the Madonna of the Traffic Lights, or the Mysterious Spirit of Bus Stops. Or maybe you will be addressed by the Lost Lady of the Stony Coves. Whatever form your dream-visitor takes, happy writing!