Hello, everyone! There are just three weeks to go until NaPoWriMo. Signups are now open, and we’re happy to see both new and familiar faces in our participants’ list. Whether you’re trying NaPoWriMo for the first time, the second, or the twelfth, we hope that the process of writing a poem a day will loosen up your writing process, and get you a wealth of new poems to play with.

As always, we’ll be posting optional prompts each day, featuring a participating site, and suggesting online poetry resources for NaPoWriMo-ers. If you have ideas for prompts, or participants or sites to feature, we’d love to hear from you. Send your suggestions to napowrimonet-AT-gmail-DOT-com.

We’ve also put together two blog buttons, for those of you who would like them!

More soon, and in the meantime, maybe this list of poetic forms will help you get your poetry engines revved?

Hello, all! It’s that time of year again — time to dust off your pencils, feather pens, typewriters, and notebooks, and get ready to write a poem a day for the month of April.

In addition to hosting a searchable list of participants’ websites, we’ll be featuring optional prompts each day, as well as poetry-related websites, and the daily work of participants. If you have an idea for a prompt, or an online poetry resource you’d like to see featured here, please drop us a line at napowrimo-AT-gmail-DOT-com. If I select your prompt or feature a website you’ve suggested, I’ll credit you, and if you are participating in NaPoWriMo, I’ll link to your site as well.

And if you’d like to follow along on social media, check us out on Twitter at @napowrimo2015, or onFacebook.

Hello, everyone. NaPoWriMo is over for 2014. I hope you enjoyed flexing your poetry muscles! Thanks to everyone who submitted prompt and journal/press ideas, and thanks to all of you for participating.The best thing about NaPoWriMo is seeing how many people are able to use the project to clear through their mental underbrush and just sit down to write — whether they are trying poetry for the first time, returning after a long while, or just using it to further what has already become a lifelong practice.

I hope to see you all again next year. In the meantime, happy writing!

Well, everyone — it’s finally here. Today is the last day of NaPoWriMo. We had over 1500 participants this year, a very good turnout indeed. I hope you’ve enjoyed the challenge and if you didn’t quite make it to 30 poems this year, no worries. NaPoWriMo will be back next year!

But for now, let’s meet our final featured press: Ahsahta, which published NaPoWriMo’er Kirsten Kaschock’s first book, A Beautiful Name for a Girl, back in 2011. The press has published many wonderful books over the years, and reads book manuscripts for its Sawtooth Prize in January-March of each year, and also occasionally has open reading periods. Right now (and I mean, really right now), the press is reading chapbook manuscripts — today is the last day to submit, so if you have something you feel is ready to go out into the world, why not send it their way?

And our featured participant for Day 30 is Jennifer Liston. I love the playfulness of these poems!

And now for our final (yet still optional!) prompt. Today, as befits the final poem of NaPoWriMo, I challenge you to write a poem of farewell. It doesn’t have to be goodbye forever — like I said, NaPoWriMo will be back again next year. If you need a little inspiration, you might find some in perusing this selection of goodbye-and-good-luck poems from the Poetry Foundation website.

Happy writing, everyone, and good-bye, and see you next year!

Hello, everyone, and welcome back for Day 29. I can’t believe tomorrow’s the last day of NaPoWriMo 2014.

Our featured journal today is Work To A Calm, which focuses on confessional poetry, and has published NaPoWriMo-er Kendall A. Bell. Work To a Calm accepts submissions year-round.

Today’s featured participant is Rhythms Nest. I kind of have a thing for erasure poems, and this poet shows us both the original and the erased text. Very cool!

And now our prompt (optional, as always). This may remind you a bit of the “New York School” recipe, but this prompt has been around for a long time. I remember using it in a college poetry class, and loving the result. It really forces you into details, and to work on “conducting” the poem as it grows, instead of trying to force the poem to be one thing or another in particular. The prompt is called the “Twenty Little Poetry Projects,” and was originally developed by Jim Simmerman. And here are the twenty little projects themselves — the challenge is to use them all in one poem:

1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use an example of false cause-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of talk you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun) . . .”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he or she could not do in “real life.”
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.

Hello, everyone! Today begins our three-day countdown until the end of NaPoWriMo. I hope you’ve enjoyed your April!

Today’s featured journal is CSHS Quarterly, which is helmed by NaPoWriMo-ers Joseph Harker and Tessa Racked. The journal is just about to publish its second issue and is currently reading for its third. There’s only two days left in NaPoWriMo now, so if you have a journal you’d like me to feature, please let me know at napowrimonet-AT-gmail-DOT-com.

Today’s featured poet is Salon Z, where you will find carefully observed details and wonderful images, like “permitting her /
to chase the random / fox thought/ down the escalator.”

And now our (optional) prompt. Today I challenge you to find a news article, and to write a poem using (mostly, if not only) words from the article! You can repeat them, splice them, and rearrange them however you like. Although the vocabulary may be “just the facts,” your poem doesn’t have to be — it doesn’t even have to be about the subject of the news article itself. Happy writing!

Hello all, and welcome back for Day 27 of NaPoWriMo.

Our featured journal today is Literary Orphans, which has published NaPoWriMo-er Charlotte Hamrick. Literary Orphans publishes fiction and non-fiction in addition to poetry, for those of you who are multi-genre writers. Submissions are open year-round.

Our featured participant for Day 27 is katscratching, where the poems display a wry, somewhat mordant, sense of humor, and a multiplicity of lengths and forms.

And now for our prompt! Our early-bird prompt this year (on March 31) was an ekphrastic poem. This is something similar — a poem written from a photograph. There are four below, one of which I hope will catch your fancy. But if you’ve a particular photo in mind that you’d like to use, go right ahead. Happy writing!

Happy last Saturday of NaPoWriMo, everyone.

Our featured journal for the day is Parcel, which will soon publish NaPoWriMo-er Rachel West. Parcel is just lovely-looking, and I’m quite please to make its acquaintance. Turns out some of my favorite poets have been published there, so I just ordered a subscription. And . . . they take submissions year-round.

Today’s featured participant is simple slanting bones, which has some lovely erasure poems, and a great (and appropriately themed) lune from Day 22.

Now for our prompt (optional, as always). Today’s prompt comes to us from Vince Gotera, who wrote his “family member” poem for Day 20 in the form of a curtal sonnet. As Vince explains, the curtal sonnet is shorter than the normal, fourteen line sonnet. Instead it has a first stanza of six lines, followed by a second stanza of four, and then closes with a half-line. The form was invented in the 1800s by Gerard Manley Hopkins, who used it in his famous poem “Pied Beauty”. So for today, I challenge you to give the curtal sonnet a whirl. It doesn’t need to rhyme — though it can if you like — and feel free to branch out beyond iambic pentameter. Happy writing!

Hello, all. This is our final Friday in NaPoWriMo . . . just a few more days to go!

Today’s featured journal is Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, which has published NaPoWriMo-er Vinita Agrawal. Cha focuses on work from and/or about Asia, and is currently accepting submissions for its September 2014 issue.

Today’s featured participant is Retirement Legs, who really got into the spirit of yesterday’s masonry prompt!

And now for our (optional) prompt. Anaphora is a literary term for the practice of repeating certain words or phrases at the beginning of multiple clauses or, in the case of a poem, multiple lines. The phrase “A time to,” as used in the third Chapter of Ecclesiastes, is a good example of anaphora. But you don’t have to be the Old Testament (or a Byrds song) to use anaphora. Allen Ginsberg used it in Howl, for example. This post by Rebecca Hazelton on the Poetry Foundation’s blog gives other great examples of anaphora in action, from Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech to Homer Simpson. So today, I challenge you to write a poem that uses anaphora. Find a phrase, and stick with it — learn how far it can go. Happy writing!

Hello all, and welcome back for Day 24.

Our featured journal for the day is Chantarelle’s Notebook, which has published NaPoWriMo-er Bruce Niedt. Chantarelle’s Notebook is currently accepting submissions for its 34th issue.

Our featured participant today is Into the Headland. The catch-up poem for Day 19 (“Late for the 19th and out of sequins”) has a wonderful first line. I’ll be thinking about that image all day.

And now, our (optional, as always) prompt! Peter Roberts has been participating in NaPoWriMo for several years now at his blog, Masonry Design. He has the charming and odd distinction of having only written poems about masonry. Today, I challenge you to do the same (for one day, at least), and to write a poem that features walls, bricks, stones, arches, or the like. If that sounds a bit hard, remember that one of Robert Frost’s most famous poems was about a wall. Happy writing!