April 30th: Palinode

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Escapril prompt #30:  "Do you hear that?” Angelea Lowes'   prompt  #30:  "I saw your ghost on a train downtown.” Napowrimo :  Well, we knew it would come to this, what with the inexorable march of time and all. Today is the final day of Na/GloPoWriMo. Thank you all for joining the challenge during this, its twentieth year! We’ll be back tomorrow with our final featured participant and some housekeeping information, as we prepare to go back into our long sleep (like   Robert Frost’s woodchuck ) until next spring. But for now, here’s our daily featured participant is  Farah Lawal Harris , who responded to Day 29’s food-based prompt with a paean to Nigerian cooking. Our final daily resource is a pair of podcasts:  Wacky Poem Life , sponsored by the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry (yes, there is a Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry!), and  Haiku Chronicles , a podcast focused on haiku and related poetic forms. And now for our last prompt of the year...
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April 15th: Supposed Goodness

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Escapril prompt #15: "superstition." 

Angelea Lowes' prompt #15: "collapsing stars."

Napowrimo: Today marks the halfway point of Na/GloPoWriMo – I hope you and your poems are going strong!

You all really hit it out of the park yesterday, with your parodies and satires in response to Day 14’s prompt. I couldn’t choose just one — so we have two featured participants today. First up is Poem Dive, with a paean to the ubiquitous smartphone, and second, Orangepeel, with a timely grouse about the Internal Revenue Service (for those of you elsewhere, April 15 is traditionally the day that annual tax returns are due in the United States).

Today’s resource is Where to Submit, a feature of Heavy Feather Review. Updated every few months, this is a good resource for open calls for submission for journals, anthologies, chapbooks, presses, fellowships, and other poetry-related opportunities.

Finally, here’s our (optional) prompt for the day. Begin by reading June Jordan’s “Notes on the Peanut.” Now, think of a person – real or imagined – who has been held out to you as an example of how to be of live, but who you have always had doubts about. Write a poem that exaggerates the supposedly admirable qualities of the person in a way that exposes your doubts.

Happy writing!

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April 1st: Poets, Start Your Engines

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April 1 is finally here, and with it comes Na/GloPoWriMo. Huzzah! Our first featured participant is  Flipped Serendipity , where the “fun fact” early-bird poem draws attention to something many of us experience when starting a challenge like NaPoWriMo — even if you feel very enthusiastic about the project, it can be hard to push yourself out of your rut and really get writing. But the first step to shaking the rust off your verse is to get something down on the page. And having done these thirty-day-challenges many times, I can say that it does get easier as you go. Speaking of featured participants, one of the ways we find them is through the comments on each day’s post. Don’t know where to find those? Just click on the title to the day’s post, and it will take you to a new page featuring just that post, and a comment section. Many folks paste links to their daily efforts there, or if they don’t have websites, copy out the poems themselves. The conversation between participants in...
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April 30th: Palinode

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Escapril prompt #30:  "Do you hear that?” Angelea Lowes'   prompt  #30:  "I saw your ghost on a train downtown.” Napowrimo :  Well, we knew it would come to this, what with the inexorable march of time and all. Today is the final day of Na/GloPoWriMo. Thank you all for joining the challenge during this, its twentieth year! We’ll be back tomorrow with our final featured participant and some housekeeping information, as we prepare to go back into our long sleep (like   Robert Frost’s woodchuck ) until next spring. But for now, here’s our daily featured participant is  Farah Lawal Harris , who responded to Day 29’s food-based prompt with a paean to Nigerian cooking. Our final daily resource is a pair of podcasts:  Wacky Poem Life , sponsored by the Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry (yes, there is a Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry!), and  Haiku Chronicles , a podcast focused on haiku and related poetic forms. And now for our last prompt of the year...
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April 9th: Sonnets

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