Well, we’ve done it again. Another National/Global Poetry Writing Month is in the books.

Our final featured participant for 2025 is grapeling, whose “askew” response to Day 30’s “songs-that-follow-you” prompt is a kind and keen reminder that there’s more than one way to experience to world.

Thanks to everyone who took up the challenge this year! We hope you enjoyed the prompts, the art/resources, and especially the community that has grown up around Na/GloPoWriMo. Speaking of that community, we extend a special shout-out for everyone who cheered along in the daily comment sections. It’s really heartwarming to see returning the same names/faces every year, and how actively and kindly you respond to each other’s work, help newbies out with questions, and create a supportive online microcosm for poetry every April.

As usual, all the prompts and posts will remain available, and the list of participating sites will stay up through early next year, when we’ll begin the house-cleaning in preparation for Na/GloPoWriMo 2026.

Thanks again, and see you next year!

Wow, we made it, everyone! Today’s the final day of National/Global Poetry Writing Month. We hope you make it to the end of the day with thirty new poems under your belt. But even if you didn’t manage to keep up with the whole poem-a-day thing, we hope you had fun!

We’ll be back tomorrow with our final featured participant and some closing thoughts for the year’s challenge, but in the meantime, our featured participant for today is Catching Lines, who brings us an elegy for Janis Joplin in response to Day 29’s inspired-by-the-music-makers prompt.

Our final resource is MatterPort Discover, a site that lets you take virtual tours of all kinds of museums, ranging from the National Museum of Ireland to the Bicycle Museum of America.

Finally, here’s the last prompt of this year’s Na/GloPoWriMo (optional, as always)! In his meandering poem, “Grateful Dead Tapes,” poet Ed Skoog riffs on the eponymous tapes that he’s found in a secondhand store, remembering various instances of hearing the band, both live and in recording. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that also describes different times in which you’ve heard the same band or piece of music across your lifetime.

Happy writing!

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

Our featured participant today is Adil Akbar, whose response to Day 28’s “music and ceremonies” prompt rather reminds us of César Vallejo.

Today’s daily resource is the online galleries of the Whitney Museum, where you’ll find artwork as varied as this fun portrait of Billie Jean King, a Frank Stella sculpture that looks like what would happen if a space station fell in love with a bridge, and this contemporary take on the classic embroidered sampler.

And now for today’s prompt – optional as always. Just as poetry is made by poets, music is made by musicians. There is always a living being behind the words, the rhythm, and at the heart of every song. Just as music and poetry can fascinate in their own right, so do the personalities behind every form of art. In her poem, “Canary,” Rita Dove riffs on Billie Holiday, and how her life has been spun into myth. Likewise, in “Ode for Donny Hathaway,” Wanda Coleman muses on another tragic figure, in the form of the eponymous soul singer and keyboardist.

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that takes its inspiration from the life of a musician, poet, or other artist. And while our example poems are squarely elegiac, don’t feel limited to minor-key feelings in your own work.

Happy (?) writing!

Welcome back, all. As of today, there’s just three days left in this year’s Na/GloPoWriMo.

Today, our featured participant is Mariyah, who brings us a poignant take on Modigliani portrait in response to Day 27’s painting-based prompt.

Today’s daily resource is El Museo del Barrio, a New York City museum focused on the experience of Puerto Ricans and Latin Americans in the United States. The museum’s website provides highlights from its permanent collection, as well videos exploring the art and artists featured.

Last but not least, here is today’s prompt (optional, as always). Music features heavily in human rituals and celebrations. We play music at parties; we play it in parades, and at weddings. In her poem, OBIT [Music], Victoria Chang describes the role that music played in her mother’s funeral. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that involves music at a ceremony or event of some kind.

Happy, or at the very least, meaningful, writing!

Happy Sunday, everyone. I hope you find it to be a relaxing and inspiring day for writing poems.

Our featured participant for the day is Hayaathi – Goddess of Sehnsucht, whose first attempt at a sonnet brings a lovely blend of grief and self-deprecating humor.

Today’s daily resource is the online collection of the Harvard Art Museums, where you can find this bright and pretty drawing of a tulip poplar, a rather forbidding poster comparing various causes of death in Wisconsin, this beautiful jade paperweight, and much more.

And now for today’s optional prompt. W.H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” takes its inspiration from a very particular painting: Breughel’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” Today we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that describes a detail in a  painting, and that begins, like Auden’s poem, with a grand, declarative statement.

Happy writing!

We finally made it to the weekend, everyone! 

Today’s featured participant is Eden Ligon, whose “live concert” poem for Day Twenty-Five shows all the sweetness of music that has ripened with time.

Our daily resource is the online collection of Spain’s Reina Sofia Museum, which houses an incredible collection of modern and contemporary art. You can find Picassos aplenty here, of course, but also things like this vertiginous sculpture that makes me think of a rollercoaster, this mysterious Magritte, and this collaboration between Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

And now for our daily (optional) prompt. The word “sonnet” comes directly from the Italian sonetto, or “little song.” A traditional sonnet has a strict meter and rhyme scheme. It’s a strange form to have wormed its way into English, which is relatively unmetrical and rhyme-poor compared to Romance languages like Italian.

But thanks to William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and others, the sonnet in English bloomed. It also became a sort of rite of passage for poets, with the Victorians especially loving very strict sonnets.

To refresh you on the “rules” of the traditional sonnet:

• 14 lines
• 10 syllables per line
• Those syllables are divided into five iambic feet. (An iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable). The word “admit” is a good example. In pronouncing it, you put more stress on the “mit” than the “ad.”
• Rhyme schemes vary, but the Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg (three quatrains followed by a concluding couplet).
• Sonnets are often thought of as not just little songs, but little essays, with the first six-to-eight or so lines building up a problem, the next four-to-six discussing it, and the last two-to-four coming to a conclusion.
• Given all these rules, it’s perhaps surprising that love poems make up quite a chunk of sonnets in English, but maybe that’s just because love poems make up quite a chunk of all poems in English?

If you want to intimidate yourself about poetry in general and sonnets in particular, read this quote from Saintsbury’s History of English Prosody.

To have something to say; to say it under pretty strict limits of form and very strict ones of space; to say it forcibly; to say it beautifully; these are the four great requirements of the poet in general; but they are never set so clearly, so imperatively, so urgently before any variety of poet as before the sonneteer.

And now, by way of illustration, let’s take a look at a few contemporary takes on the sonnet. The first, by Dan Beachy-Quick, is a pretty strict traditional sonnet. The next two –by Terrence Hayes and Alice Notley – are looser. And finally, the last one, by June Jordan, is a rather strict sonnet (rhyme- and meter-wise, though somewhat looser in line-specific syllable count) that doesn’t sound strict at all. It is joyfully informal in its language and tone.

After all this, here’s your prompt! Try your hand at a sonnet – or at least something “sonnet-shaped.” Think about the concept of the sonnet as a song, and let the format of a song inform your attempt. Be as strict or not strict as you want.

Happy writing!

Happy final Friday of Na/GloPoWriMo, all.

With apologies for the delay (I’m traveling, and just plain fell asleep last night before updating today’s post!), today’s featured participant is Wren Jones, who brings us a flashback to Springsteen in response to Day Twenty-Four’s making-music-together prompt.

Our daily resource is the online galleries of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, one of India’s foremost museums. It’s a pleasure to browse through the images here. I particularly liked these anklets that aren’t just jewelry but a sort of personal piggy bank, this portrait of the fabulously mustachioed J.M. Cursetjee, and this highly decorative flask, originally meant to hold gunpowder!

Finally, here is our optional prompt for the day. In her poem, senzo, Evie Shockley recounts the experience of being at a live concert, relating it the act of writing poetry. Today we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that recounts an experience of your own in hearing live music, and tells how it moves you. It could be a Rolling Stones concert, your little sister’s middle school musical, or just someone whistling – it just needs to be something meaningful to you.

Happy writing!

Welcome back, everyone, for Day Twenty-Four of our annual poetry-writing challenge!

Our featured participant for the day is haphazard, whose birdsong poem for Day Twenty-Three places primacy on the “gaps in the music.”

Today’s daily resource is the Art Institute of Chicago, where just searching the collection for the word “stars,” I found this amazing quilt, a very fancy-looking Soviet plate, and an illustration of the constellation Leo from a medieval Arabic astronomical guide.

And now for today’s (optional) prompt. One fundamental aspect of music is its communal nature. While music can be made by a single person, of course, it’s often made in groups. Rock bands, orchestras, church choirs – they all involve making music together. And often, we’re playing or performing music that was written by, or inspired by, other people.

In her poem, Duet, Lisa Russ Spaar tells the story of two sisters making music together, based on two pre-existing songs by different artists. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that involves people making music together, and that references – with a lyric or line – a song or poem that is important to you.

Happy writing!

Happy Wednesday, everyone, and happy twenty-third day of National/Global Poetry Writing Month.

Today, our featured participant is Elizabeth Boquet, who brings us a poem with a poem in it in response to Day Twenty-Two’s lessons-based prompt.

Our resource for the day is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum’s online image collection is practically endless, and to call it varied would be an understatement. There’s over 2,000 images just of baseball cards! To say nothing of candelabra featuring what appears to be a scandalized swan, a processional sword belonging to the guardsman of a sixteenth-century German duke, and a couch that I would very much like to fall upon in a melodramatic swoon.

And last but not least, here’s today’s (optional) prompt. Humans might be the only species to compose music, but we’re quite famously not the only ones to make it. Birdsong is all around us – even in cities, there are sparrows chirping, starlings making a racket. And it’s hardly surprising that birdsong has inspired poets. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that focuses on birdsong. Need examples? Try A.E. Stallings’ “Blackbird Etude,” or for an old-school throwback, Shelley’s “To a Skylark.”

Happy writing!

Welcome back, everyone, for the twenty-second day of National/Global Poetry Writing Month.

Our featured participant today is Cutting Hail, who brings us not just one poem in response to Day 21’s “instructional” prompt, but three!

Today’s daily resource is the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence, Italy. If you are at all interested in Renaissance Italian masters, it’s the right place to get an eyeful of Titians, Caravaggios, Botticellis, Canallettos, and da Vincis.

And now for today’s optional prompt! Did you take music lessons as a child? Despite having all the musical talent of a dried-out lemon, I took two years of piano lessons. I was required to practice for half an hour a day, and showed my disgruntlement by playing certain very annoying songs – like Turkey in the Straw – over and over, as loudly as possible. But while I thought of the lessons as a kind of torture, I’m glad as an adult to have taken them – if only for the greater dexterity it gave to my hands!

In her poem, Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons, Diane Wakoski is far more grateful than I ever managed to be, describing the act of playing as a “relief” from loneliness and worry, and as enlarging her life with something beautiful. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem about something you’ve done – whether it’s music lessons, or playing soccer, crocheting, or fishing, or learning how to change a tire – that gave you a similar kind of satisfaction, and perhaps still does.

Happy writing!