21 Thursday Apr 2016
Posted in Blog
2016 has been a noteable year for celebrity deaths. Today we say goodbye to Prince. In honor of his musical contributions to American culture, write a poem that integrates lyrics from one or more of his songs. Alternatively, steal one his titles and write a poem.
20 Wednesday Apr 2016
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Tags
abecedarian, april poetry challenge, poem, Poetry, poetry prompts, writer, Writing, writing prompts
It’s 4/20. And if pot was legal nationwide, this prompt would be very different…
Today, write an abecederian poem. It’s when the first letter of each line follows the order of the alphabet. So, the first line starts with A, the second with B, the third with C, etc. In the end you should have a 26-line poem.
Here’s one by Michelle Bonczek Evory (yours truly):
Lake Affected
April 11th and through my Michigan window: no surprise, really:
Blizzard. The small sidewalk trees sag under fluff and sky.
Cindy says she can’t take it, this weather. She misses
Dallas, the blue bells, has had enough of the lake’s snow globe
Extending its stay beyond this season’s home opener, yellow
Flowers and late night light for late nights
Grilling. Her hand opens back toward Texas like a beauty queen’s,
Her eyes bat their long lashes: Take me back old friend, holy hell,
I am sorry. But everyone has different needs
Jig-sawing their bellies. Pieces of life floating down like, well, you
know. Kevin, I’m leaving messages like lightning on your machine.
Lying in bed this morning I couldn’t sleep. Snow
Makes electric champagne of my nerves, pops me open, twists me until sweet
Nostalgia curls me up with a book, squeezes poetry from my skull, seduces me to
Ogle over young faces in old pictures, realphabetize my library, boil
Potatoes until my kitchen windows steam. I burned yesterday’s leftover
Quart of coffee reheating on the stove. But I didn’t care, all
Restless as I was and hungry for everything no longer
Snuggling in my shoes or my bed, which is to say, bodies from the past.
Time, oh time and time again time
Undoes more than the elastic seams on lingerie, but like that—
Very much like that, the things that make us sexy
Wear away. And when it snows like this I want to melt until
X-rays show me one white dot, unique, branching out, stuck,
Yearning for others like me that will have a ball with me making something
Zesty as an orange, ready to be thrown at the world.
19 Tuesday Apr 2016
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Tags
april poetry challenge, poem, Poet, Poetry, poetry prompts, velveteen rabbit, writers, Writing, writing prompts
“‘It doesn’t happen all at once…You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit
I couldn’t help but share this excerpt that was shared with me today in my Yin Yoga class. For our class purposes, this was used as a meditation on acceptance. Here, on the Billow, for our purposes, I want to think about the Veleveteen Rabbit and his friend the horse who said this.
For today’s poem, write a dramatic monologue in the persona of an inanimate object. To stay true to the theme, give voice to one of your old stuffed animals, dolls, trucks–any toy that meant something to you when you were a child, or at some other point in your life. Perhaps the voice will speak about something it has witnessed. Perhaps, like the horse, it will share its wisdom or philosophy of life.
If you’d rather, give voice to something else that doesn’t have one.
18 Monday Apr 2016
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april poetry challenge, dorianne laux, poem, Poetry, poetry prompts, shipfitter's wife, work poems, writer, Writing, writing prompts
“Monday, monday,” sang the Mamas and the Papas, “Can’t trust that day.” “Wish it were Sunday, my I-don’t-have-to-run day,” sang the Bangles. And we all know how easy it is to get those Monday blues. Why are we running? Is the answer seriously just that four-letter “w” word, WORK? Jobs and school that demand we be awake against our body’s will? Staring into a blind sun, coffee dribbling down our chins as we sit in traffic? Lists of things we need “to do.”
For today’s prompt, write a work poem. What’s your typical Monday look like at the office? What’s your dream job? Maybe write a list poem about the contents of your briefcase or toolbox. Are you a stay-at-home parent? What’s that look and smell like? Use the senses and specific diction to bring your job and work to life.
One of my fave poems about work? I give you Dorianne Laux’s “The Shipfitter’s Wife”:
The Shipfitter’s Wife
I loved him most
when he came home from work,
his fingers still curled from fitting pipe,
his denim shirt ringed with sweat
and smelling of salt, the drying weeds
of the ocean. I’d go to where he sat
on the edge of the bed, his forehead
anointed with grease, his cracked hands
jammed between his thighs, and unlace
the steel-toed boots, stroke his ankles
and calves, the pads and bones of his feet.
Then I’d open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me — the ship’s
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the foreman clanging
off the hull’s silver ribs. Spark of lead
kissing metal. The clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle,
and the long drive home.
17 Sunday Apr 2016
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Tags
april poetry challenge, epistolary poems, poem, Poetry, poetry prompts, writer, Writing, writing prompts
After two days of yard and garden work, I am ready to sit…and write a poem. For today’s poem, we will write an epistolary poem, or a letter poem. An epistolary poem can come in any form and be about any matter. I am pulled to write a letter to a younger version of myself, but perhaps you will be moved to write one to a future version of yourself. What would you say to yor 12-year-old self? Your 21-year-old self? Your 45-year old self? You 101-year-old self? What would the you today, right here &now, say to yourself on the day you graduated from college? Married? Decided not to have children? Anchor the you that you address in an event or an age in general.
Let the writing begin!
17 Sunday Apr 2016
Tags
april poetry challenge, form poems, poem, Poetry, poetry challenge, poetry prompts, writer, Writing
It’s not called a chalenge for nothing. Yesterday’s beautiful spring weather captured me and I spent the entire day outside in the yard and garden. As a result, our sixteenth prompt slipped down on my priority list which included cutting back an enormous holly bush on our property, clearing leaves from the base of plants, and weeding. Now that these chores are done, let’s write!
For some reason, maybe the spring weather and all the imaginings of what the new garden will look like, I’ve been wanting to invent a new poetry form. So, let’s do it. For this prompt, create a new poetry form. You can focus on rhyme as does the sonnet, repetition of words or lines as do the pantoum and sestina, or subject matter as does the elegy.
Invent the form and then write the poem.
15 Friday Apr 2016
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Tags
april poetry challenge, cliche, poem, Poetry, poetry challenge, poetry prompts, writer, Writing, writing prompts
We have arrived at the halfway point!
Today, let’s make a list of as many cliches as you can think of and at their halfway point, mix and match them.For example:
A penny for your thoughts.
Good day to be alive.
Hip to the scene.
Grass is always greener on the other side.
A penny to be alive.
Hip to the other side.
The grass is always greener for your thoughts.
Good day to the scene.
Once you have a new list, revise them into a poem paying attention to either sound or image, or both.
Write on!
14 Thursday Apr 2016
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Tags
april poetry challenge, poem, Poetry, poetry challenge, poetry prompts, writer, Writing, writing prompts
This is one of our favorite prompts and one Rob and I utilize often. Choose 4-5 books about varying things–a collection or two of poetry, an autobiography, a book about stones, a novel. Pick up a book, randomnly open to a page, glacne down. The phrase your eyes catch: write it down. Pick up another book and repeat the process 10 times. Then, see what you have and revise it into a poem. You will be amazed at the way the universe’s synchronicity manifests itself in such an approach.
12 Tuesday Apr 2016
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april poetry challenge, bijan stephen, flaneur, paris review, poem, Poetry, poetry challenge, poetry prompts, song of myself, walt whitman, Writing, writing prompts
Be a Flâneur! As Bijan Stephen writes on the Paris Review blog:
“The figure of the flâneur—the stroller, the passionate wanderer emblematic of nineteenth-century French literary culture—has always been essentially timeless; he removes himself from the world while he stands astride its heart…the flâneur heralded an incisive analysis of modernity, perhaps because of his connotations: “[the flâneur] was a figure of the modern artist-poet, a figure keenly aware of the bustle of modern life, an amateur detective and investigator of the city, but also a sign of the alienation of the city and of capitalism,” as a 2004 article in the American Historical Review put it. ”
Channel your Walt Whitman and hit the streets observing people and interactions, noting birds and animals, jotting it all down in a notebook to become a poem. If you’re feeling really inspired, truly engage your Whitman and skip out of work after your lunch break to engage your senses on the sidewalk. Here’s a section from “Song of Myself” for inspiration:
11 Monday Apr 2016
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Tags
april poetry challenge, Miroslav Holub, poem, Poetry, poetry challenge, Poetry International, poetry prompts, translation poems, Writing, writing prompts
Today’s prompt comes from my memory of an excercise used by the poet Christopher Howell in one of his classes. It is a twist on the translation poem. The twist: you shouldn’t know the language. The point is to read/listen to the poem in its original language and, by tone, sound, feel, mood–every way beside knowing what the words mean–translate the poem. As you guessed, this is not about who can translate from one language to another the best.
Poetry International Rotterdam has a smorgasborg of poets writing in a smorgasborg of languages. Some are recorded and you can listen as in these three poems by the Czech poet Miroslav Holub. Other poems appear only in English. Others, in their original language. Remember, the point is to not understand the words, but to feel them.
Napiš to!
Michelle
the poet's billow 