Well, it’s happened again. We’ve come to the last day of another National/Global Poetry Writing Month. We’ll be back tomorrow with a final featured participant and some housekeeping details, but in the meantime, congratulations to all who have made it to the end! And if your output has tapered off or been spotty — no worries! The best thing about Na/GloPoWriMo is that every day you write a poem, you get a poem-shaped prize.

Our featured participant today is words with ruth, where you’ll find a complex, tender response to Day 29’s past-and-present prompt.

Our final feature resource is poet and professor Judy Jordan’s YouTube videos covering individual poems and discussing poetic craft.

And now, here’s this year’s final (optional) prompt. In his poem, “Angels,” Russell Edson speaks of these spiritual warrior-messenger-guardians as if they were a type of endangered animal. Brief as it is, the poem is disorienting in its use of flattened diction, odd similes, and elliptical statements. Today, try writing your own poem that discusses a real or mythical being or profession (demons, firefighters, demonic firefighters) with the same sort of musing yet dispassionate tone.

Happy writing!

Happy Wednesday, all, and happy penultimate day of National/Global Poetry Writing Month!

Our featured participant for the day is Sunra Rainz, whose response to Day 28’s six-line-poem prompt reminds us to seize the day (and wear the dress).

Today’s resource is The Poetry Exchange podcast. Each episode not only explores a different poem, it discusses why that particular poem has been a “friend” to a particular interviewee.

Finally, here’s today’s prompt (optional, as always). In “After Turning the Clocks Back,” Jennifer Moxley links present with past, using a few well-placed details to invoke both a sense of the daily “now” and a nostalgic sense of the speaker’s long-ago life. In your poem today, similarly compare your everyday present life with your past self, using specific details to conjure aspects of your past and present in the reader’s mind.

Happy writing!

Welcome back, all, for the twenty-eighth day of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Today, our featured participant is the Poet Laureate of the Primitive Planets, which brings us a (gently) hysterical love poem in response to Day 27’s even-stanza-length prompt.

Today’s resource is this short meditation by the poet Barbara Guest, on the tension between a poet’s desire to control a poem, and the fact that poetry is often most moving when it surprises both the poet and the reader with wild and unpredictible moves.

And now for today’s (optional) prompt. Victoria Chang’s poem, “The Lovers,” is short and somewhat shocking, bringing us quickly from a near-hallucinatory descriptive statement to a strange sort of question, before ending on the very direct statement of a “truth.” Six lines, three sentences, and to top it off, a title that I think works for the poem but is only obliquely related to its text. Today, try writing a poem that follows the same beats: three sentences, six lines: statement, question, conclusion.

Happy writing!

Happy Monday, everyone. I hope you’re feeling energized about your writing as we head into the final days of this year’s April challenge.

Our featured participant today is What Rhymes With Stanza?, which brings us a quite feline response to Day 25’s ars poetica prompt.

Today’s resource is The Writers Annex Online, which offers a variety of short, online writing-related courses that include poetry workshops and explorations of specific poets’ work. Tuition rates vary from course to course, but these can be surprisingly affordable, particular given how distinguished the faculty is.

Last but not least, here’s today’s (optional) prompt. Start by reading Robert Fillman’s poem, “There should always be two.” Now, write your own poem in which all the verses contain the same number of lines (whether couplets, triplets, quatrains, etc.) and in which you give the reader instructions of some kind.

Happy writing!

Hello, everyone, and welcome back for Day Twenty-Six of National/Global Poetry Writing Month.

Today, our featured participant is Jay Siegmann, whose response to Day 25’s rather complex prompt bring us metaphors for metaphor itself.

Our resource for the day is the Commonplace podcast, which provides you with oodles of interviews with contemporary poets, as well as explorations of specific themes and books.

And now for our prompt (optional, as always). The Latin phrase ars poetica means “the art of poetry.” It’s been a tradition going all the way back to Horace for poets to write poems that lay out – whether explicitly or obliquely – some statement about why the poet writes, or what they think poetry is. Here’s a very recent example, another that I had to study in school, and a very long, witty ars poetica by Alexander Pope. Today, we challenge you to write your own ars poetica, giving the reader some insight into what keeps you writing poetry, or what you think poetry should do.

Happy writing!

Hello, all! Happy Saturday, and happy 25th day of Na/GloPoWriMo!

Our featured daily participant is Behind Door Number 3, where the response to Day 24’s “strange things at night” prompt involve socks going on walk-about.

Today’s resource is Boston University’s video archive of lectures and conversations stemming from former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinksy‘s course on The Art of Poetry.

And now for our (optional) daily prompt! In her poem, “The Apple Tree in Blossom,” Melissa Kwasny strings together several fantastical metaphors for the apple tree, before shifting into exclamations, definitions, and a series of nimble, tonal shifts – and seeming changes in topic – before circling around back to the apple tree. Today’s challenge asks you to write your own poem in which you use at least three metaphors for a single thing, include an exclamation, ruminate on the definition of a word, and come back in the closing line to the image or idea with which you opened the poem.

Happy writing!

We’ve made it to the final Friday of National/Global Poetry Writing Month 2026, everyone!

Today’s featured participant is Poem Dive, where you’ll find a rather heavy response to Day 23’s villanelle prompt, but one that showcases a particular quality of the form — in deft hands, the repeated lines can have a sort of dolorous, bell-like quality, as the poem were tolling its refrains.

Our resource today is this curated selection of letters written by the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, in which he explains aspects of his thinking about poetry.

Finally, here is our (optional) prompt for the day! In her poem, “The Flying Nightdress,” Mandakranta Sen describes something fantastical and strange that occurs while the rest of the world is asleep. The imagery of the poem is dreamlike, but the situation it describes is otherwise presented quite straightforwardly. Today, we challenge you to write your own poem that takes place at night, and describes something magical or strange that happens but that no one is awake (or around) to notice.

Happy writing!

What’s so good about Thursday, anyway? Well, when it’s in April, it furnishes an excellent excuse to write another poem for Na/GloPoWriMo!

Our featured participant today is Lorraine Ryan, in whose response to Day 22’s “serious fun” prompt we hear both the counsel of “monkey mind” and what I suppose must be its North American cousin, “squirrel mind” (though squirrels, diligently planning for winter, also embody the protestant work ethic that the poem mentions).

Today’s resource is the Versecraft podcast. If you’re interested in poetic form, this is the podcast for you!

And speaking of forms, today’s (optional) prompt takes its inspiration from Kiki Petrosino’s loose villanelle, “Nursery.” Try your hand today at your own take on a villanelle, and have the poem end on a question.

Happy writing!

Happy Wednesday, everybody, and welcome back for Day 22 of Na/GloPoWriMo.

Our featured participant for the day is 7eyedwonder, where the response to Day 21’s names-and-nicknames prompt brings us a lovely riff on the on the Shakespearean phrase, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Today’s resource is The Kelly Writers House’s system of online book groups. At any given time, the Philadelpia-based center has a number of different book/discussion groups going on, and all you need to participate is an email address and a willingness to engage in a discussion of a specific group’s chosen book or set of poems.

And now for our (optional) prompt! Jaswinder Bolina’s poem “Mood Ring” imagines the speaker as both himself and an interior being (who happens to take the form of a small donkey). It’s quite silly . . . and not silly at the same time. A sort of “serious fun.” Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which the speaker is in dialogue with him or herself.

Happy writing!

Wow! Three weeks down, and just a week and some change left to go in this year’s National/Global Poetry Writing Month.

Today’s daily featured participant is Hazhapard’s Na/GloPoWriMo, where the response to Day Twenty’s mythic prompt involves a small brown owl. (And here I thought “morpork” was just a part of a silly name the late Sir Terry Pratchett made up for an imaginary city . . . though now I suppose the owl in the coat-of-arms ought to have been a clue).

Our resource for the day is this short essay by the poet Kimiko Hahn on senryu, the haiku’s comic cousin.

And here’s today’s prompt (optional, as always). In her poem, “Names and Nicknames,” Monika Kumar reminisces over various nicknames she has been given, the actual name her mother gave her, and the way both names and nicknames indicate a claim and an intimacy at once. In your poem for today, we challenge you to write your own poem in which you muse on your name and nicknames you’ve been given or, if you like, the name and nicknames for an animal, plant, or place. For example, I’ve always been amused at the fact that red trillium (a rather pretty wildflower that grows in the woods near my house) has several other common names, including the bizarre “stinking benjamin.” The plant grows very short and close to the ground, so I’ve never actually leaned over far enough to get a whiff and see how merited that sobriquet is!

Happy writing!