Attention writerly friends! This may be coming late in the month, but it’s not too late to get started on 30 days of poetry for National Poetry Month. I, myself, have decided to start late and write about two or three poems a day to catch up. There are some radically specific prompts in here that I’m nervous to try out myself, so hopefully you find these challenging but not impossible to do. Happy writing!
1. Go to your Facebook and make a poem out of the first status you see in your newsfeed.
Recommended for you
2. Write a poem detailing how to make the perfect cup of coffee (or tea).
3. Write a poem formatted like a standardized test question. It can be math, science, English, etc. related. Points for creativity if you can make it funny.
4. What’s a food you hate? Write an ode to it praising its virtues.
5. Write an avant-garde poem about bug infestations. Write about ant colonies, or ladybugs invading your house during fall. Have wasps ever made nests in your home? Make the shape look like ants covering everything, or make a giant wasp.
6. Write a poem about a time when you went on vacation and everything went wrong. Did you get lost in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language? Lose something important when road-tripping? Did you get in a fight with your friend or significant other? Write about what you were feeling then.
7. Write a poem from the perspective of the last thing you didn’t recycle (but should have). Imagine its life in the landfill. How is it feeling? Lonely? Happy? Scared? Was it particularly attached to you before you tossed it, or was it excited to be free of you? Write about its life 100 years from now when it hasn’t decomposed yet. Give it a personality.
8. Write a poem about your hair. Is it long? Is it short? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Do you wish it were different? Are you planning to change it? Does it reflect your personality, or a time in your life when you needed something new? Or write about someone else’s hair that you really like (or really hate).
9. Write a poem in the form of a letter to the producer of the last movie you watched. Make references and allusions to the movie, use dialogue and themes from it. Let them know how watching it made you feel.
10. Find an actual, physical newspaper, pull the most boring article out of it you can find, copy it into a Word document and make a blackout poem from it.
11. Write an ode to your favorite color without ever mentioning what color it is. Describe the color. If you use objects that are that color, don’t make it obvious (for example, if it’s purple, don’t pick grapes). See if your readers can guess what it is.
12. Write a poem in terza rima addressed to a person in the last dream you remember. Remember what was happening in the dream and describe that. If you were keeping them from falling off a cliff and they fell anyway, apologize. Or don’t, depending on how you felt. It’s more interesting if you mention the bizarre.
13. Write a poem in the form of a letter to yourself in 10 years that doesn’t include big questions (Where do you live? What’s your house like? What is your job?) or advice (Don’t make this mistake again, don’t forget you were once like me). Write to them as if you know them already; write to them as though you haven’t seen them in a couple of weeks and would like to catch up.
14. This one takes bravery. Write a poem about an ex-lover on a piece of paper. Burn it; no matter how long, no matter how good, and save no copies of it. Then write it again from memory.
15. Write a poem in anticipation of shouting every word (or every third word).
16. Write a poem using the words porch, quotient, mayonnaise and laboratory.
17. Write a poem in which you only write one word an hour for seven hours. What happens to it after that is up to you.
18. Write a series of haikus detailing the progression from the use of oil lamps to LED lights.
19. Personally, I hate that when the word “sticky” and “love” are together, everyone thinks of sex. Write a love poem using the word sticky and the imagery of something sticky that has absolutely nothing to do with sex.
20. Write an impersonal poem about a very emotional part of your life, or something emotional that you are experiencing right now. Distance yourself from your feelings; write about it as though you are very detached from it. Writing about it in third person is encouraged, but not required.
21. Write a romantic poem about apples using archaic English and some form of rhyme-scheme. Think early Keats, or Dickinson. When you’re finished, translate it into modern-day speech.
22. Write an erotic poem about or using words or imagery from math or science. If you’re feeling brave, make it avant-garde in the form of complex equations or graphs.
23. Write a poem in which you tell the reader how to properly shop for groceries.
24. Write a poem in which you tell the reader how to properly write a poem.
25. Write a poem about how hummingbirds would be if they were evil.
26. Write a poem about home improvement. Installing drywall, painting, installing carpet or hardwood flooring; choose whatever your heart desires.
27. Write a poem about a tattoo you have (or would like to get).
28. Take the cheesiest, sappiest boy-band song lyrics you can find (NSYNC, One Direction) and make a brand-new poem out of them, minus the cheese and sap.
29. Write a poem arguing why we need (or should do away with) quotas. Print quotas, import quotas, bandwidth quotas, etc.
30. Write a poem about an issue or topic you care about deeply that you think others should care about or pay attention to more.
