poetry mini-challenge: build-a-poem

by Carolee Sherwood and Jill Crammond Wickham

On our recent trip to the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, we attended a reading by Afaa Michael Weaver. The highlight of the reading was a 10-section poem from his current manuscript. Each section of the poem was used to explore a singular theme from a variety of angles, viewpoints and perspectives — very much like Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself. As Weaver’s deep voice faded out at the end of each section, we waited expectantly to see how the next would unfold.

This would be perfect, we thought, for our November Mini-Challenge — five days, five sections of a whole poem.

How do you build a poem, you ask?
Well, there are the obvious construction metaphors: piece by piece, board by board, block by block. However, we prefer to think in terms of food. Just like tapas is a meal you create with small samplings from many dishes, this week you’re going to create a single poem out of five smaller poems.

Need a menu? Try these delightful and savory options.

• Use the last line of the first poem to begin your second poem, last line of the second poem to begin your third poem, and so on.
• Write the same poem using five different viewpoints/settings/voices/time periods.
• After writing your first poem, pick an image to expand on in your second poem (and so on!).
• Choose a theme. Brainstorm the five most disparate ways of exploring it. Write five poems.
• Choose an abstraction. Choose four synonyms for the abstraction. Write a poem for each word. (Want live on the wild side? Try a couple antonyms; they’ll spice up your writing, just like hot peppers!)

As you write
Please visit the forums for the November Poetry Mini-Challenge. They will be marked #1, #2, #3 and so on — one for each poem you write for this challenge. Jump into the forums and post links to your poems (or the text of the poems themselves if you don’t have a blog). Try to make it all the way to #5 and visit the forums to cheer each other on.

Special “Build-a-Poem” posting notes/suggestions: To make a cohesive reading experience, after posting poem #1, consider posting the previous poem(s) with each new poem. Or … once you reach poem #5, why not post the series in its entirety?

About the poetry mini-challenge
If you’ve signed on to Read Write Poem recently or if you missed the other challenges, you’re welcome to visit the original post for background. Here’s the short version:

A mini-challenge is a poetry-writing, poetry-reading or poetry-process prompt that you respond to with a new poem each day for a set number of days. The idea isn’t to warm up the poetry muscles, it’s to feel the burn. Go deeper. Explore further. Pass the place you may have stopped initially. See what comes next. And as if that weren’t juicy enough, you do all of it with the support and encouragement of the other crazy hardworking Read Write Poem members who take on the challenge.

Note: Please save the comments section of this post for discussion on or questions about the process. The poems and links go in the forums associated with the Poetry Mini-Challenge group, located here.

Carolee Sherwood is a poet and artist who lives in Upstate New York. She is co-editor of Ouroboros Review, mother of three boys and a veteran Read Write Poem columnist. You can find her rambling about the creative life at Carolee Sherwood and drafting poems at I Am Maureen.

Jill Crammond Wickham has discovered that the frantic pace of motherhood has driven her to write more, not less. Jill writes at Mom Trying to Write.  She is a co-editor for Ouroboros Review  and a senior contributor and columnist for Read Write Poem.