The day we’ve all been waiting for is nearly here — April 1, and the official start to Na/GloPoWriMo 2022.

That said, April 1 starts a bit earlier for some of you than it does here on the east coast of the United States, what with that whole earth-spinning-on-its-axis and international-date-line thing.

For those of you who want to get a jump on things (either because it’s already April 1 where you are or, who knows, maybe you’re just a glutton for poetry!), we’ve got a special early-bird prompt, based on the poetry of Emily Dickinson.

Dickinson is known for her elliptical style, unusual word choices, and mordant sense of humor. Over the past year, I’ve experimented with writing poems based on, or responding to, various lines from her poems. Today, I’d like to challenge you to do the same! Here are a few lines of Dickinson’s that might appeal to you (the slashes indicate line breaks):

• “Forever might be short”
• “The absence of the Witch does not / Invalidate the spell”
• “If to be ‘Elder’ – mean most pain – / I’m old enough, today”
• “The second half of joy / Is shorter than the first”
• “To be a Flower, is profound / Responsibility –

And if none of those inspire you, you can find many of her poems here.

For those of you getting a jump-start on April, happy writing! As for the rest of you, I’ll see you back here tomorrow with our first “official” prompt, featured participant and featured online magazine.

We’re so close to April 1! As in prior years, we’ll be posting an optional prompt every day, to help those of you who are having trouble getting started, and to introduce everyone to different forms, themes, and ways of generating drafts! We’ll also be featuring an online poetry magazine each day — we hope you’ll find them to be great resources for discovering new poets/poems, and maybe even places to submit your own work for publication.

We’ll be back tomorrow with an early-bird prompt. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please write us at napowrimonet-AT-gmail-DOT-com.

Today is March 29th, and that means just three days remain until April 1, and the kickoff of National/Global Poetry Writing Month 2022! I hope you are getting in the mood for poetry — you know, getting out your quill pens, your flouncy shirts, and finding suitably lyrical and romantic trees to sit under while penning your newest verses. Or at least getting a blank MS Word document open and ready to type in!

New participants’ sites are being added to our list every day, and we’ll keep those submissions open throughout the month of April. But I’d also like to give a shoutout to all of those who will be writing, but who won’t be posting your poems online. You are also part of Na/GloPoWriMo!

Hello, everyone! April 1 is just half a month away, and that means Na/GloPoWriMo 2022 is nearly upon us. I hope you’re excited for this year’s challenge, and that you’re sharpening your poetry pencils (or, er, your keyboards) in anticipation.

We’ll be back in the three days leading up to April 1, but in the meantime, we have a fun new resource for any of you that are interested not just in writing poetry, but in potentially submitting your poems to magazines for publication. If you’ve tried to publish before, you know that it involves a lot of research — you have to find magazines that you think would be interested in your work, track to see when they’re open for submissions, understand their guidelines, etc. I call it “Poetry Administration,” and sometimes I wish I were a rich Victorian gentleman-poet who could hire a young man of good education and poor fortune as my private secretary, just to deal with it.

Well, I’m not a rich Victorian gentleman — and I suspect that you aren’t either! But here comes a new website, chill subs, which takes some of the angst and guesswork out of poetry submissions. The website lets you search journals by the genres they publish, whether they’re open for submissions, and what their general “vibe” is. It’s not just a good way to find submissions opportunities, it’s a great way to discover journals that may have been previously unfamiliar, and to find new poets and poems as well.

Hello, everyone!

It may be hard to believe that we’re starting March already, but we are. And that means that National/Global Poetry Writing Month is just 30 days away! Haven’t heard of Na/GloPoWriMo? Well, this is your opportunity, whether you’re a published poet, a beginner, or just someone who loves a challenge, to try your hand at writing a poem a day for the month of April.

How does it work? Simple — just write a poem every day from April 1 to April 30. If you’ll be posting your efforts to a blog or other internet space this year, you can submit the link using our “Submit Your Site” form, and your website will show up in our “Participants’ Sites” list.

And if you’re not planning to post your work online? No worries! Na/GloPoWriMo doesn’t require that at all. All you have to day is write a poem a day for April.

As in prior years, we’ll be posting an optional daily prompt to help you get inspired, as well as featuring a different participant each day. This year, we’ll also be featuring a different online poetry magazine each day, with the hopes that you’ll be able to discover new poems and poets that you like, and perhaps even identify some good places to submit your own work.

For those of you that would like buttons/badges to post on your blogs or websites to show your participation, here is this year’s crop!:

And a hint for those of you who would like to communicate with fellow Na/GloPoWriMo-ers — if you click on the title to each day’s post, you’ll find that the title is a link that will take you to a page specific to that day’s post, with a comment section. This is a great place to post links to your daily output during Na/GloPoWriMo, and to find other participants’ poems.

Finally, we hope you’ll allow a little plug for the brand-new (just launched today!) poetry collection written by Na/GloPoWriMo’s founder, Maureen Thorson.

It’s called Share the Wealth, and you can find more information here. There will also be a virtual launch reading for the book on March 8 — more info on that here!

We’ll be back on the 15th of March, as we build up to our count-down to April 1! And if you have questions in the meantime, please contact us at napowrimonet AT gmail DOT com.

We did it, everyone! We got through yet another Na/GloPoWriMo. I hope you enjoyed the prompts, readings, and featured participants this year, and that you have a crop of drafts to work over during May (also known — to me, at least — as National/Global Poetry Revision Month).

Our final featured participants for the year are Hues n Shades, which brings us a lush and mysterious response to the “directions” prompt for Day 30, and MellowYellow, where the directions will lead you to encounter, among other things, the Grand Boogle of Betrayal Weasels! (I am not sure whether these are better or worse than R.O.U.S.)

Finally, I want to thank everyone who participated, and all those who commented and cheered one another on in the comments, on Facebook, and on Twitter. It heartens me every year to see how friendly and supportive Na/GloPoWriMo-ers are of each other’s efforts. Truly, you are what makes Na/GloPoWriMo great!

Thank you all, and until next year — happy writing!

It’s finally here, everyone! The last day of Na/GloPoWriMo. I hope you’ve enjoyed the challenge of writing thirty poems, and that you’ll join us again next year.

We’ll be back tomorrow with a wrap-up post, and our final featured participants, but in the meantime . . .

Our featured participants today are Amita Paul, who brings us a poem about a porthole, and Anna Enbom, whose response to the “in the window” prompt is filled with a sense of lingering threat.

Today’s featured reading is a live event that will take place tomorrow, May 1, at 3:30 p.m. eastern. Poet sam sax will be reading for The Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in New Jersey.

And now for our final (still optional!) prompt. Today’s prompt is based on a prompt written by Jacqueline Saphra, and featured in this group of prompts published back in 2015 by The Poetry Society of the U.K. This prompt challenges you to write a poem in the form of a series of directions describing how a person should get to a particular place. It could be a real place, like your local park, or an imaginary or unreal place, like “the bottom of your heart,” or “where missing socks go.” Fill your poem with sensory details, and make them as wild or intimate as you like.

Happy writing!

Oh, we’re so close to the end of Na/GloPoWriMo. It’s sad in a way, but also inspiring — we’ve written so many poems together! And of course, like April itself, Na/GloPoWriMo will come again.

Today’s featured participants are Eunoia, where you’ll find a poem about dreams in response to Day 28’s question-based prompt, and My Author-itis, where you’ll find a short and witty response to the prompt.

Our featured daily reading is a pre-recorded one, which you can peruse whenever you like. It’s a video of Victoria Chang reading for Berry College in November of last year.

And now, for our prompt (optional, as always). This one is called “in the window.” Imagine a window looking into a place or onto a particular scene. It could be your childhood neighbor’s workshop, or a window looking into an alien spaceship. Maybe a window looking into a witch’s gingerbread cottage, or Lord Nelson’s cabin aboard the H.M.S. Victory. What do you see? What’s going on?

Happy writing!

We’re really in the home-stretch of Na/GloPoWriMo now, with just three days left until we reach April 30.

Our featured participants for the day are Dispellings, which brings us a poem loosely inspired by the word “onism,” and My Fresh Pages, where the poem for Day 27 is based on the world “occhiolism.”

Today’s daily reading is a live event that will take place tomorrow, April 29 from 1:30 – 3:30 p.m. eastern time. Poets Dina Gatina, Polina Barskova, and Vlazhyna Mort will be reading from their work and discussing contemporary Russian women’s poetry with professor and translator Ainsley Morse.

Our prompt today (optional, as always), is to write a poem that poses a series of questions. The questions could be a mix of the serious (“What is the meaning of life?”) and humorous (“What’s the deal with cats knocking things off tables?”), the interruptive (“Could you repeat that?”) and the conversational (“Are those peanuts? Can I have some?”). You can choose to answer them – or just let the questions keep building up, creating a poem that asks the reader to come up with their own answer(s).

Happy writing!

Happy twenty-seventh day of Na/GloPoWriMo, everybody!

Our featured participants today are A Writer Without Words – Some Motivation Required, who has re-written the lyrics to a song from Les Miserables to tell us the sad tale of a woman whose children demand all her chocolates, and Scrambled, Not Fried, where the lyrics to a patriotic song have been replaced with an homage to grammarians.

Today’s featured reading is a live event that will take place tomorrow, April 28, at 8 p.m. eastern time. Arda Collins and Monica Youn will be reading at (well, virtually at) The Poetry Project in New York City.

In today’s (optional) prompt, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem inspired by an entry from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. The entries are very vivid – maybe too vivid! But perhaps one of the sorrows will strike a chord with you, or even get you thinking about defining an in-between, minor, haunting feeling that you have, and that does not yet have a name.

Happy (well . . . sort of ) writing!

UPDATE: If this prompt has shown up late for you, I apologize! It was all scheduled to go out at 12:01 a.m. New York time, but it seems that there might have been a timing hiccup — possibly a result of the work that was done to fix the site up after it was offline for a few hours yesterday while my hosting service worked to resolve a hack.