We made it, everyone! Na/GloPoWriMo has come and gone – for the twentieth time! I hope you had fun.

My gratitude goes out to you for joining us, and my special thanks to everyone who has commented on other participants’ work. Your kindness, care, and enthusiasm mean the world.

Our final daily participant is A Rhyme a Day, where the palinode prompt for Day 30 resulted in a lovely and bittersweet rumination on trains.

We’ll be back next year with more prompts and resources. Until then, happy writing!  

Well, we knew it would come to this, what with the inexorable march of time and all. Today is the final day of Na/GloPoWriMo. Thank you all for joining the challenge during this, its twentieth year! We’ll be back tomorrow with our final featured participant and some housekeeping information, as we prepare to go back into our long sleep (like Robert Frost’s woodchuck) until next spring.

But for now, here’s our daily featured participant is Farah Lawal Harris, who responded to Day 29’s food-based prompt with a paean to Nigerian cooking.

Our final daily resource is a pair of podcasts: Wacky Poem Life, sponsored by the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry (yes, there is a Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry!), and Haiku Chronicles, a podcast focused on haiku and related poetic forms.

And now for our last prompt of the year (still optional!) Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a palinode – a poem in which you retract a view or sentiment expressed in an earlier poem. For example, you might pick a poem you drafted earlier in the month and write a poem that contradicts or troubles it. This could be an interesting way to start working on a series of related poems. Alternatively, you could play around with the idea of a palinode by writing a poem in which the speaker says something like “I take it back” or otherwise abandons a prior position within the single poem.

Happy writing!

Hello, everyone, and happy End-of-Na/GloPoWriMo Eve.

Our featured daily participant is A Writer Without Words, where the “index” poem for Day 28 doesn’t just give us index entries for something delicious, but does so in abecedarian fashion.

Today’s featured resource is Brevity Magazine’s archive of craft essays.

And here’s our daily (optional) prompt. Start by reading Alberto Rios’s poem “Perfect for Any Occasion.” Now, write your own two-part poem that focuses on a food or type of meal. At some point in the poem, describe the food or meal as if it were a specific kind of person. Give the food/meal at least one line of spoken dialogue.

Happy writing!

Just three days left in Na/GloPoWriMo 2023!

Today’s featured participant is Jacquelyn Markham, who brings us a bouquet of yellow celosias in response to Day 27’s “Blank of Blank” prompt.

And for today’s resource, we have another book and two chapbooks published by Na/GloPoWriMoers, featuring poems written during the challenge. For our book, we have Bruce Niedt‘s collection, In the Bungalow of Colorful Aging. And for our chapbooks, here’s Lorraine Whelan’s Home Sweet Home Goodbye and Nina Lewis’s Fragile Houses.

Last but not least, here’s our daily prompt, optional and once more taken from our archives. Have you ever flipped to the index of a book and found it super interesting? Well, I have (yes, I live an exciting life!) For example, the other day I pulled from my shelf a copy of on old book that excerpts parts of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s journals. I took a look at the index, and found the following entry under “Man”:

fails to attain perfection, 46; can take advantage of any quality within him, 46; his plot of ground, 46; his use, 52, 56; not to be trusted with too much power, 55; should not be too conscientious, 58; occult relationship between animals and, 75; God in, 79, 86; not looked upon as an animal, 80; gains courage by going much alone, 81; the finished, 89; and woman, distinctive marks of, 109; reliance in the moral constitution of, 124; the infinitude of the private, 151; and men, 217; should compare advantageously with a river, 258.

That’s a poem, right there!

Today, I challenge you to write your own index poem. You could start with found language from an actual index, or you could invent an index, somewhat in the style of this poem by Kell Connor. Happy writing!

Happy writing!

(updated to fix the broken link to our featured participant’s poem)

Happy Thursday, everyone, and happy twenty-seventh day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Today, our featured participant is Veruugal, who brings us a moving elegy in response to Day 26’s “what’s in a name?” prompt. For a little more context, see the comment here.

As today’s featured resource, we have another duo of books written by Na/GloPoWriMoers, and featuring work first drafted during Na/GloPoWriMo. First, here’s Victoria Doerper’s What if We All Bloomed?: Poems of Nature, Love, and Aging, and next, Mirjana M’s Colour Me in Cayenne & Chlorine.

And now for our daily prompt (optional, as always). Today, begin by reading Bernadette Mayer’s poem “The Lobelias of Fear.” Now write your own poem titled “The ________ of ________,” where the first blank is a very particular kind of plant or animal, and the second blank is an abstract noun. The poem should contain at least one simile that plays on double meanings or otherwise doesn’t quite make “sense,” and describe things or beings from very different times or places as co-existing in the same space.

Happy writing!

Welcome back for Day Twenty-Six of Na/GloPoWriMo, everybody.

Our featured participant for the day is Joe Hesch, where the love poem for Day 25 is full of dreamy, surreal similes.

And now, here’s a new pair of books published by Na/GloPoWriMoers, featuring poems written during the yearly challenge. First up, we have longtime participant Gloria D. Gonsalves’ book Let’s Go Walking in the Storm, and next, Dawn Anderson’s book World Stamp-Poems. Both Gloria and Dawn actually have several poetry collections featuring work first written during Na/GloPoWriMo. Check out their websites to see more!

Our (optional) prompt for day asks you to write a portrait poem that focuses on or plays with the meaning of the subject’s name. This could be a self-portrait, a portrait of a family member or close friend, or even a portrait of a famous or historical person. If you need help delving into the meaning of your poem-subject’s name, this website may help.

Happy writing!

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!