30. Write a poem that engages with a strange and fascinating fact. It could be an odd piece of history, an unusual bit of art trivia, or something just plain weird.
29. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the Plath Poetry Project’s calendar. Simply pick a poem from the calendar, and then write a poem that responds or engages with your chosen Plath poem in some way.
28. We challenge you today to draft a prose poem in the form/style of a postcard.
27. We challenge you to pick a card (any card) from this online guide to the tarot, and then to write a poem inspired either by the card or by the images or ideas that are associated with it.
26. We’d like to challenge you to write a poem that includes images that engage all five senses. Try to be as concrete and exact as possible with the “feel” of what the poem invites the reader to see, smell, touch, taste and hear.
25. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that takes the form of a warning label . . . for yourself!
24. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write an elegy – a poem typically written in honor or memory of someone dead. But we’d like to challenge you to write an elegy that has a hopefulness to it.
23. Today, we challenge you to [write] a poem based in sound. The poem, for example, could incorporate overheard language. Perhaps it could incorporate a song lyric in some way, or language from something often heard spoken aloud.
22. Today, I’d like you to take one of the following statements of something impossible, and then write a poem in which the impossible thing happens:
23. Today, we challenge you to [write] a poem based in sound. The poem, for example, could incorporate overheard language. Perhaps it could incorporate a song lyric in some way, or language from something often heard spoken aloud.
22. Today, I’d like you to take one of the following statements of something impossible, and then write a poem in which the impossible thing happens:
- The sun can’t rise in the westi
- A circle can’t have corners
- Pigs can’t fly
- The clock can’t strike thirteen
- The stars cannot rearrange themselves in the sky
- A mouse can't eat an elephant
21. We’d like to challenge you today to tackle her third one, which is based in the myth of Narcissus. After reading the myth, try writing a poem that plays with the myth in some way.
20. Write a poem that involves rebellion in some way.
19. Today we challenge you to write a paragraph that briefly recounts a story, describes the scene ... Now try erasing words from this paragraph to create a poem.
18. Find a poem in a book or magazine (ideally one you are not familiar with). Use a piece of paper to cover over everything but the last line. Now write a line of your own that completes the thought of that single line you can see, or otherwise responds to it. Now move your piece of paper up to uncover the second-to-last line of your source poem, and write the second line of your new poem to complete/respond to this second-to-last line. Keep going, uncovering and writing, until you get to the first line of your source poem, which you will complete/respond to as the last line of your new poem.
17. Write a poem re-telling a family anecdote that has stuck with you over time.
16. Write a poem that prominently features the idea of play.
15. Writing a poem in which a villain faces an unfortunate situation, and is revealed to be human (but still evil).
14. Today’s prompt is to write entries for an imaginary dream dictionary. Pick one (or more) of the following words, and write about what it means to dream of these things: teacup, seagull, ballet slipper, shark, wobbly table, dentist, rowing boat.
12. Today, we’d like to challenge you specifically to write a haibun that takes in the natural landscape of the place you live.
11. Write a poem that addresses the future, answering the questions “What does y(our) future provide? What is your future state of mind?"
10. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem of simultaneity – in which multiple things are happening at once.
9. We challenge you today to write a poem in which something big and something small come together.
8. To write poems in which mysterious and magical things occur. Your poem could take the form of a spell, for example, or simply describe an event that can’t be understood literally.
7. Write out a list of all of your different layers of identity .... divide all of those things into lists of what makes you feel powerful and what makes you feel vulnerable ..... write a poem in which one of the identities from the first list contends or talks with an identity from the second list.
6. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that stretches your comfort zone with line breaks.
5. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that reacts both to photography and to words in a language not your own.
4. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that is about something abstract – perhaps an ideal like “beauty” or “justice,” but which discusses or describes that abstraction in the form of relentlessly concrete nouns. Adjectives are fine too!
3. Today, we challenge you to write a list poem in which all the items are made-up names.
2. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that plays with voice. The point is just to play with who is speaking to who and how.
1. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that is based on a secret shame, or a secret pleasure.
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