poetry mini-challenge: holiday survival guide (poetry style!)

by Carolee Sherwood and Jill Crammond Wickham

No matter how you look at it — an abundance of joy, a barrage of family, a magical time, an intimacy with faith, a commercial deathtrap — the final weeks of the year are hectic. There’s only one sure way we know to survive the end-of-the-year madness: Get some poems out of it!

No matter how you spend the holidays, be on the lookout for bits and pieces of your celebrations to wrap up in your poems.

Because it’s such a busy time, we’re going to take it easy on you and make this a three-poem challenge (three poems in three days), and we’re going to give you several ideas. We recommend pushing your muse by choosing one subject/category and writing three poems within the same prompt. Since it’s the season of kindness and generosity, however, no one is going to end up on the naughty list for going rogue and choosing to work with more than one prompt.

Here you go:

1. Write three “odes” or three narrative poems to holiday traditions (e.g., favorite foods, activities, decorations). Approach this with seriousness or silliness, but attempt to avoid sentimentality. For great examples, check out out any of Kevin Young’s odes, such as his “Ode to Pork” or the narrative piece “Christmas Eve: My Mother Dressing,” by Toi Derricotte.
2. Write three character sketches, each of a different relative. (Feel free to change names to protect individual privacy — or not!) Pay attention to the relatives who gather around you this time of year. Consider physical details, personal histories and memories. You may find inspiration in “Grandma Climbs,” by Philip Schultz, “Cousin Nancy,” by T.S. Eliot or “Granddaughter,” by Robinson Jeffers.
3. Use list poems to write year-end reviews. Look at your year from three different angles (the good, the bad, the ugly; family, friends, work; at home, on the road, around town) and write a list poem from each angle. You may also want to try this: Write a list poem with personal details about your year, and write a second list poem about what’s gone on in the world this year. Make poem number three a combination of selected items from the two lists.

As you write
Please visit the forums for the December Poetry Mini-Challenge. They will be marked #1, #2 and #3 — 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), and be sure to visit your fellow poets’ pieces to cheer each other on.

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.