Day Thirteen

Here in the Land of Na/GloPoWriMo, the thirteenth day of the month isn’t ominous — not when it means another chance to write poems!

Today, our featured participant is verlie burroughs, who brings us a bittersweet response to Day Twelve’s memory-of-a-relative prompt.

Our resource for the day is the Poets House blog, where you’ll find tons of interviews with contemporary poets.

To get started with today’s prompt, first read Walter de la Mare’s poem “A Song of Enchantment.” Then, John Berryman’s poem “Footing Our Cabin’s Lawn, Before the Wood.” Both poems work very differently, yet leave you with a sense of the near-fantastical possibilities of the landscapes they describe. Try your hand today at writing your own poem about a remembered, cherished landscape. It could be your grandmother’s backyard, your schoolyard basketball court, or a tiny strip of woods near the railroad tracks. At some point in the poem, include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal, spoken speech – like a rhyme, or syntax that feels old-fashioned or high-toned.

Happy writing!