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.
by Carolee Sherwood and Jill Crammond Wickham
While reading Sarah J. Sloat’s chapbook, In the Voice of a Minor Saint (a wonderful collection … check out all the reviews on Read Write Poem’s Virtual Book Tour!), we stumbled on an old friend: the cento. A cento, or patchwork poem, is quite literally a poem stitched together from the lines of other poets. A patchwork poem can be rhymed or unrhymed; it can be assembled with emphasis on lines, or the lines might be chosen because they work together to create a certain mood or theme.
Sloat used the work of 16 French Surrealists to create the evocative “Naked, Come Shivering,” which begins with a line from Pierre Reverdy, “Not wanting anything to die of hunger … .”
There is much to be learned from patchwork poetry … about the poet(s) you study, your response to them and, of course, the poems you create. Which leads us to this month’s mini-challenge: Fall in love with a poet. (It is February after all, the month of love here in the United States.)
Spend five intimate days (or nights) with your favorite poet. Gather your poet love’s work around you and get busy … reading, of course. Highlight your favorite lines. Tired of your current poet paramour? Spend some time with a poet you’d like to know a little better! (Though it may be tempting to entertain more than one suitor, for the integrity of our challenge, please remain devoted to just one poet!)
Days one and two, craft a poem using only lines by your chosen poet (see process notes and instructions below). Day three is the true test of your new relationship: If you can’t stand to part ways, write one more cento. If you need a break from said love, read on.
In the final days of your tryst, you’re on your own. Your task is to write two or three poems by your own hand, inspired by the centos you have created. Look over the work from your first few days with Mr. or Mrs. X. What themes do you see? Any repeating sounds, phrases? Whatever your patchwork/centos inspire, write it!
A few cento process notes
- Use only full lines of other people’s poetry in the creation of patchwork poems. Phrases and favorite words don’t count (at least not around these parts).
- Change a tense or a participle here and there. Add an ’s,’ remove an ‘-ed’ or other minor stuff like that. The patchwork purist, however, takes lines just as they are. That is an extra challenge.
- While altering tenses and omitting such words as “but,” “and,” “is,” even changing “I” to “me,” or “he,” to “she” is OK, putting your own words into a patchwork poem is not. Save your own words for your original poems, inspired by your centos.
- Always, always credit your muse! Be sure to indicate the poet and poem you have chosen lines from. If all lines are from a single collection, it is OK to simply name the collection.
As you write
Please visit the forums for the February Poetry Mini-Challenge. They will be marked #1, #2, #3 and so on — one for each poem you write for this challenge. Jump into those forum topics 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 is a veteran columnist and a newly appointed manager here. 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 columnist and newly appointed manager for Read Write Poem.
by Carolee Sherwood and Jill Crammond Wickham
We are saturated with resolutions. We can’t assemble even one more accomplishment-based, goal-oriented construct. Already, we have good intentions overload. The only thing we know is that we want to get back in the habit of writing poems again. Regularly. With abandon. Until our fingers bleed. The holidays side-tracked us. (Did they distract you, too?). And we’re ready to start over with our poetry practice.
That’s the theme for this Poetry Mini-Challenge: starting over.
We’re going to capitalize on some of the energy of the New Year without wading through any more resolutions. This is not the place for your PowerPoint presentations on the changes you’re going to make in 2010, and it’s not the place for you to show off the line graphs you’ve set up to track your progress.
This is the place to explore those occasions when you’ve scrapped everything and attempted new beginnings. Here are some possibilities: throwing away the batter and starting the dish from scratch, crumpling up a drawing and starting a new one, splitting up with someone and getting back together under different terms (or jumping into a new relationship), packing up an old apartment and finding a fresh start somewhere else, digging up all the flowers and replanting them in different configurations, starting an emotional letter over and over because you can’t get it right.
Use any of these scenarios (and some of your own, real or made up) to launch your poems. You’re going to have to dig deep because we’re shooting for six days and six poems. You can stick with one scenario for all six poems (entrench yourself in all its elements or tangents), or you can play with six different ideas, one in each piece.
As you write
Please visit the forums for the January 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), 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.
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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read write poem news- read write poem napowrimo anthology
June 20, 2010 | 1:36 pmThe Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Anthology is still in production. Selection, placement, layout and copyediting are taking longer than anticipated. Thank you for your patience. I hope to have the piece completed in July. For those who have emailed asking if they can be included, the May 7 deadline for submission of work stands. Those who met that deadline will be included. Please check the post on this site listing who I received submissions from by that date. If you submitted your work by the May 7 deadline in accordance with our guidelines and your name is not listed, send an email to info (at) readwritepoem (dot) org.
- read write poem napowrimo anthology
May 5, 2010 | 3:09 pmRemember that Friday* is the deadline for submitting work to the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Anthology. Check out the guidelines for submission in the main column (to the left). On May 8, we’ll post a news item listing everyone we’ve received work from. If you submitted work and your name is not on that list, please let us know. Thanks!
*I initially said “tomorrow,” but I meant to say “Friday.”
- napowrimo congratulations, and a reminder
April 24, 2010 | 12:05 pmIt’s the final week of the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge! Just 7 days left. With that, a reminder that Read Write Poem will culminate with the anthology featuring work from those who complete the challenge. A post with details for submitting to the anthology will be published May 1. Be sure you remove any information from the site that you want preserved — such as group content and personal messages. Those elements of the site will be removed May 1 as well. The main site will remain up as an archive.
- ‘underlife’ tour at january gill o’neil’s blog
April 20, 2010 | 8:11 pmJanuary Gill O’Neil’s virtual book tour has moved to her site and is underway now. Check out the lineup at Poet Mom.
 Archive for read write poem news »
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thank you and farewell As of May 1, 2010, Read Write Poem is no longer active.
In late May, an anthology featuring work from those who completed the Read Write Poem NaPoWriMo Challenge will be published here and on issuu.com.
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