Yay! April 1 is here again, and so is our yearly poetry writing adventure. Whether you’re new to Na/GloPoWriMo or an old pro, the basics remain the same. Write a poem a day for the month of April, and have fun!

Each day, you’ll find here a new featured participant and daily resource. We’ll also have an optional daily prompt for those of you who find yourself in need of a little inspiration (or just like the additional challenge). If you’d like to get the prompts by email, just click on the title of this post, and you’ll be taken to a page that has an email-subscription form (as well as the comments section for today!)

If you’ll be posting your work to a website or blog, feel free to submit the URL for our list of participants’ sites, using the “submit your site” link at the top of the page. And if you like to link to your daily efforts, the comments section for each day’s post is a great place to do that. Agai, just click on the title to the daily post, and you’ll be whisked away to a page full of friendly folks that link or post their daily poems and do a lovely job of cheering one another on.

And so, without further ado, our featured participant for the day is Rahul Gaur, who brings us a meditation on holiness in response to our early bird prompt.

Our first daily resource is the Youtube channel for the University of California at Berkeley’s “Lunch Poems” reading series. Here, you can watch and listen to readings from a wide range of contemporary poets.

And now, here is our (optional) prompt for the day! The tanka is an ancient Japanese poetic form. In contemporary English versions, it often takes the shape of a five-line poem with a 5 / 7 / 5 / 7 / 7 syllable-count – kind of like a haiku that decided to keep going. 

Some recent examples include L. Lamar Wilson’s “Aubade Tanka,” Tarik Dobbs’s “Commuter Tanka,” and Antoinette Brim-Bell’s “Insomniac Tankas.”   And here’s a sort of parody tanka by Paul Violi, which starts out with the kind of cliché image that you might find in a thousand imitations of classic Japanese poetry, and ends up somewhere very different. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own tanka – or multi-tanka poem. Theme and tone are up to you, but try to maintain the five-line stanza and syllable count.

Happy writing!

It’s March 31, or as we like to call with around here, Na/GloPoWriMo Eve. A time when poetic spirits haunt the land, preparing for their month of fun…

Tomorrow, we’ll have for you our first daily resource and featured participant, as well as a daily prompt. In the meantime, here’s an early-bird prompt for those of you whose geographic relationship with the international date line means that April 1 arrives a bit earlier than it does at National/Global Poetry Writing Month HQ.

Start by reading Katie Naughton’s poem, “Debt Ritual: Oysters.” Now, write your own poem in which you refer to a specific writer or artist (or work of literature/art) and make a declarative statement about want or desire. Set the poem in a particular, people-filled place, like a restaurant, bus station, museum, school, etc.

Happy writing!

Ooh, just two days left until April 1, and the beginning of Na/GloPoWriMo 2026! We’ll be back tomorrow with our early-bird prompt, but if you’re trying to shake off your pre-challenge poetic jitters in the meantime, why not soothe yourself with this brief guide to prosody, the art and science of poetic meter?

Happy last Sunday in March, all, and happy three-day-countdown to National/Global Poetry Writing Month. This will be our twenty-third year! It’s somewhat sobering to think that if Na/GloPoWriMo were a person, it would already be old enough to drive, vote, drink, and probably have its own apartment…

Ah, well. Time flies when you’re having fun. And we certainly hope you have fun with this year’s challenge. As usual, we’ll have daily prompts, daily resources, and a daily featured participant. And stay tuned for our early-bird prompt on March 31!

Happy Ides of March, everyone (unless you’re Julius Caesar). For those of you who are not doomed Roman emperors, mid-March should hold no terrors — especially because it means that National/Global Poetry Writing Month is almost upon us. As it turns out, writing a poem every day for a month is far less intimidating than a bunch of fairweather friends armed with daggers! Learning to dance on the knife’s edge of verse is a wondrous kind of fun — and the mortality rate is refreshingly low.

All that silliness aside, we’ll be back in the three days leading up to April. In the meantime, why not spend some time exploring The Poetry Archive? This non-profit is dedicated to preserving recordings of poets reading their work, and they have nearly 2,000 recordings freely available online.

Happy listening!

Hello, all. It’s March 1, which means it’s getting to be that time of year again. Time to start putting on our poetical thinking caps, and gear up to write thirty poems across the month of April.

Whether you’re just learning about Na/GloPoWriMo or returning for the umpteenth time, the idea is simple: Write a poem a day for the month of April. That’s thirty days, thirty poems. That’s the only rule! (And if you break it, remember — there are no poetry police. No one will come hunt you down. It’s fine. This is all for fun!)

To help you along, we’ll be posting a prompt every day through the month, along with a special “early-bird” prompt on March 31, to help tide over all those on the other side of the international date line from Na/GloPoWriMo headquarters, and for whom April begins a few hours earlier than it does here in Maine, USA.

Perhaps you are wondering what you should do with your daily efforts? Well, if you have a blog or other website, feel free to post them there, and then you can link to your daily efforts in the comment section for each day’s prompt. The comment sections are lively and friendly, and you can access them by clicking on the title to each day’s post. You can also submit your blog or website for inclusion in our list of participants’ sites – just click the “Submit Your Site!” link at the top of the page.

Finally, if you would like a little website button or banner to reflect your participation in Na/GloPoWriMo 2026, you can find a few options below.

We’ll be back around March 15, with a little status post that will give you some insight into what we’re working on for April. In the meantime, f you have questions in the meantime, please contact us at napowrimonet AT gmail DOT com.

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!