poetry mini-challenge: hold onto your pens!

by Carolee Sherwood and Jill Crammond Wickham

If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you’re happy and you know it, stomp your feet. If you’re planning on doing NaPoWriMo (writing a poem each day in April), jump up and down.

Are you jumping up and down? At least metaphorically? Good!

In anticipation of needing all of our strength for April, the 5-day March Poetry Mini-Challenge is not writing-based. It is reading- and studying-based. It is inspiration-based. Our hope is that you will use this challenge to warm-up for writing every day in April.* Hold onto your pens (you won’t need them)! You only need to know how to search the Internet, flip through textbooks, peruse shelves and chat with your Read Write Poem pals.

Day 1: Introduce yourself to a new form
We’ll use the Day 1 forum for you to describe a form that you’re just learning about. You may even link to an example of the form. (Hint: Look at Poets.org’s “Poetic Forms & Techniques” for ideas if you need any.

Day 2: Share a writing tip
What do you do for inspiration when you come up empty? How do you manage to sit down and write when you’d rather not? You may share your own writing tips or links to articles/interviews that have guided you.

Day 3: Tell us what you like about your favorite poem
What is your favorite poem (current fave or all-time fave)? What attracts you to the poem?

Day 4: Discover a new poem
Go to your bookshelf. Search the web. Ask a friend. Do what you gotta do. Just find a poem that’s entirely new to you. If you’re schooled in the classics, maybe you look for a gurlesque poem. If you’re a slam poet, maybe you grab onto a sonnet. We’ll use the forum to talk about our new discoveries.

Day 5: Chat around the water cooler
Day 5 will be a day for us to talk about our writing habits in general and with regard to NaPoWriMo. Have you attempted it –or anything like it — before? How did you get through? What obstacles do you anticipate this April? What can you do to prepare?

As you read, study and find inspiration
Please visit the forums for the March Poetry Mini-Challenge. They will be marked #1, #2, #3 and so on — one per each assignment for this challenge. Jump into the forums and comment or post links to your blog posts about the assignments (specific instructions will be found in each forum, including the reminder to use links when talking about other poets’ work instead of posting their lines).

Let’s socialize now: once April hits, we won’t have time!

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. Comments and links in response to each day’s challenge go in the forums associated with the Poetry Mini-Challenge group, located here.

*Speaking of writing every day, there will be no mini-challenge in April. April is its own challenge. See you again in May! If you’re not sure what NaPoWriMo is, read last year’s post that introduced our April scheme, and gave some history about NaPoWriMo.

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.