We live in a world of increasing specialization. Just about every little things has an entire field of knowledge dedicated to it, and each of those little fields has its own vocabulary.
Science uses a whole lot of Latin, psychology uses the word affect in a very strange way, and unless you happen to be a [...]

What happens when you pour balsamic vinegar over extra-virgin olive oil? The oil rests on top of the vinegar in the cruet, but if you shake the contents, you create a delicious salad dressing.
Prompt:
For your poem this week, try combining two elements that don’t seem to go together at first glance. Here’s the process:
• Think [...]

This week we welcome one of our participants at Read Write Poem who will be joining our prompt team.
 
At fourteen Ren Powell read Helen Hayes’ admission of having misinterpreted: “And the Word was God”. Feeling a kinship with Hayes - an awe of the power of words - Ren swapped her teen-angst poems for playwrighting. [...]

This week’s prompt is aunt, simply because today is my favorite aunt’s birthday. I call her Aunt B (for Barbara), but she is also known as Babs, Barbie, Sissy, Mom, Mother, Grams, Grandma, Grandmother and Mrs. Linn.
Perhaps you have a favorite aunt (or uncle or cousin). But then, so many families are crazy (fun or [...]

I.
“I’ve done nothing but cry all day. All day I’ve cried.” “It looks pretty gloomy for the first day of Spring.” “Then he took my cat outside.” “It’s perfect for a bachelor.” Random words. Anonymous opinions. Sad truths. Humorous observations. Snippets of other people’s conversation can serve as great inspiration for your writing. Actually, writing [...]

As Juliet mentioned on Monday, this Friday - March 21 -  is World Poetry Day.

So I thought we could all take some time to go green this week. Laud the beauty of nature, decry the ruin of the earth, or simply ponder all the things we throw away and ask yourself this fundamental question: what is [...]

One of the things I love about this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere is how the trees are returning to their broader life. I often wonder what it would be like to be a tree, how different life would be - rooted in one place and  naked in the winter (or to have one unchanging outfit [...]

A lot of writers try to develop an authentic, original voice. We read the work of other poets for inspiration and guidance, but when it comes time to call forth our own words, we want them to come from our own inner spring.
Dreams can provide the writer with a never-ending source of original images, feelings, [...]

I suppose I should start by apologizing for the cliché, but your prompt this week is to repeat yourself poetically. Repetition is one of the most important concepts in poetry. Songwriters understand this with their catchy choruses and repetition is very common in verse forms. Villanelles, sestinas, rondeaux and pantoum are all built on repetition. [...]

I grew up in Northern Maine where we claimed ownership of the phrase: “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.” We had two seasons: winter and Fourth of July. We consulted The Farmer’s Almanac and the width of stripes on caterpillars to know how much snow we’d have. We believed the number [...]