Congratulations, all — we’ve made it one-third of the way through National/Global Poetry Writing Month!

Today’s featured participant is the sea close by, which brings us both a Spanish and an English version of a lovely and sensuous response to Day 9’s Neruda-inspired ode prompt.

Our resource for the day is the YouTube channel of Canada’s Griffin Poetry Prize, where you’ll find videos of past prize nominees as well as discussions of the art of translation.

And now for our optional prompt! Ezra Pound famously said that “poetry is news that stays news.” While we don’t know about that, the news can have a certain poetry to it. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on one of the curious headlines, cartoons, and other journalistic tidbits featured at Yesterday’s Print, where old new stays amusing, curious, and sometimes downright confusing.

Happy writing!

Happy Tuesday, all, and happy ninth day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant for today is Rook Poetry, where a cowboy and samurai circle around each other in response to Day 8’s unlikely connections prompt (reminding me of The Magnificent Seven / Seven Samurai).

Today’s daily resource is Poem Today, a twitter account where you’ll typically find at least one poem every day, and usually more.

Our prompt for today (optional, as always) takes its inspiration from Pablo Neruda, the Chilean-born poet and Nobel Prize Winner. While he is most famous in the English-speaking world for his collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, he also wrote more than two hundred odes, and had a penchant for writing sometimes-long poems of appreciation for very common or mundane things. You can read English translations of “Ode to the Dictionary” at the bottom of this page, “Ode to My Socks” here, and “Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market” here.

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own ode celebrating an everyday object.

Happy writing!

Well, we’ve officially passed the one-week mark! We hope your inspiration is holding up. But if you find it flagging, our daily optional prompts might just give you the lift you need to power through.

Today, we have two featured participants: (1) Behind Door Number 3 and (2) Orangepeel, where you’ll find very differnt, but compelling, takes on Day 7’s postcard prompt.

Our featured resource today is this animated video of a talk given by the poet Jane Hirshfield on the art of the metaphor.

Finally, our (optional) prompt for the day takes its inspiration from Laura Foley’s poem “Year End.” Today, we challenge you to write a poem that centers around an encounter or relationship between two people (or things) that shouldn’t really have ever met – whether due to time, space, age, the differences in their nature, or for any other reason.

Happy writing!

Happy first Sunday of Na/GloPoWriMo, all. Let’s give ourselves all a virtual round of applause for making it through the first week of the poem-a-day challenge!

Our featured participant today is Oregano Oranges, where you’ll find a response to Day 6’s “weird wisdom” prompt that places a unique spin on telling a lie.

Today’s featured resource is theheartofpoems, an Instagram account featuring both poetry and art.

And last but not least, we’re taking it easy with today’s (optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem titled “Wish You Were Here” that takes its inspiration from the idea of a postcard. Consistent with the abbreviated format of a postcard, your poem should be short, and should play with the idea of travel, distance, or sightseeing. If you’re having trouble getting started, perhaps you’ll find some inspiration in these images of vintage postcards.

Happy writing!

Welcome back, everyone, for the sixth day of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo.

Today, our featured participant is Skrol an Yeth, where you’ll find a response to Day 5’s prompt in not just English but Welsh Cornish! (Sorry for that very silly mistake!)

Our featured resource for the day is “A Poetry Channel” on YouTube, where you’ll find an eclectic array of poems being read with accompanying images and video.

And now for our (optional) prompt. Today’s we’d like to challenge you to write a poem rooted in “weird wisdom,” by which we mean something objectively odd that someone told you once, and that has stuck with you ever since. Need an example? Check out Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Making a Fist.”

Happy writing!

Friday is here, and so is the fifth day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Today’s featured participant is Narrative Paralysis, which brings us a spooky, cosmic poem in response to Day 4’s “strange things” prompt.

Our resource for the day is not a social media account, but a podcast that we’ve featured in past years (and is good enough to bear repeating): The Slowdown. You’ll find a poem here every day — you can listen online and read the transcript with the daily poem as well.

Now, let’s get to our optional prompt! Today we’d like you to start by taking a look at Alicia Ostriker’s poem, “The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog.” Now try your hand at writing your own poem about how a pair or trio very different things would perceive of a blessing or, alternatively, how these very different things would think of something else (luck, grief, happiness, etc).

Happy writing!

Happy fourth day of Na/GloPoWriMo, everyone!

Our featured participant today is Lizzy Burnham, who brings us an appropriately peculiar — and vinegary — poem in response to Day 3’s surrealist prose poem prompt.

Today’s resource is the Instagram account Read a Little Poetry, where you will in fact find a lot of poetry.

Our (optional) prompt for the day challenges you to write a poem in which you take your title or some language/ideas from The Strangest Things in the World. First published in 1958, the book gives shortish descriptions of odd natural phenomena, and is notable for both its author’s turn of phrase and intermittently dubious facts. Perhaps you will be inspired by the “The Self-Perpetuating Sponge” or “The World’s Biggest Sneeze.” Or maybe the quirky descriptions of luminous plants, monstrous bears, or the language of ravens will give you inspiration.

Happy writing!

Hello, all! Let’s hope poetry helps us get over the “hump” of this Wednesday.

Today, our featured participant is Joy Wright, who brings us a wistful poem in response to yesterday’s platonic love poem prompt.

Our resource for the day is the twitter account Peege, where you’ll find lots of poetry, but also cool art and photos.

Last but not least, here’s our prompt for the day – optional, as always. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a surreal prose poem. For inspiration, check out Franz Kafka’s collection of short parables (my favorite is “The Green Dragon”).

Happy writing!

Happy Tuesday, everybody, and welcome back for Day 2 of Na/GloPoWriMo. Hopefully, Day 1 whetted your appetite for verse, and now you’re ready for seconds.

Our featured participant for the day is A Rhyme a Day, where the response to Day 1’s prompt cleverly blends the memory of reading a book with the memory of what was going on in the poet’s life while reading it.

Today’s poetry resource is Secret Chords, an Instagram account where you will find a new poem every day.

Finally, here’s today’s optional prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a platonic love poem. In other words, a poem not about a romantic partner, but some other kind of love – your love for your sister, or a friend, or even your love for a really good Chicago deep dish pizza. The poem should be written directly to the object of your affections (like a letter is written to “you”), and should describe at least three memories of you engaging with that person/thing.

Happy writing!

Hello, everyone. It’s the first day of NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo 2024, and we hope you’re eager to get writing. As usual, we’ll be featuring a participant each day, giving you a poetry resource, and – of course – an optional prompt to help you in case you’re having trouble with inspiration.

Today’s featured participant is Glenn Mitchell, whose response to our early-bird prompt brings us rhyme, wordplay, and a heartfelt theme.

This year, our poetry resources will focus on social media accounts (though we’ll have a few other things, too) that regularly post poems from books, magazines, and elsewhere, letting you discover new-to-you poets, and just get a quick fix of poetry from time to time. Today’s resource is the twitter account of the poet Tom Snarsky, where you will find a plethora of poems to peruse!

And now for our daily (and totally optional) prompt. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write – without consulting the book – a poem that recounts the plot, or some portion of the plot, of a novel that you remember having liked but that you haven’t read in a long time.

Happy writing!