National Poetry Month - Day 20

And now for our optional prompt! Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that “talks.” What does that mean? Well, take a look at this poem by Diane Seuss. While it isn’t a monologue, it’s largely based in spoken language, interspersed with the speaker/narrator’s own responses and thoughts. Try to write a poem grounded in language as it is spoken – not necessarily the grand, dramatic speech of a monologue or play, but the messy, fractured, slangy way people speak in real life. You might incorporate overheard speech or a turn of phrase you heard once that stood out to you – the idea here is to get away from formally “poetic” speech and into the way language tends to work out loud.

Happy writing!

I get my prompts here!

Bits and Peices of Streets and People

Hey soul sista,

I overheard you say there's a party going on over there.

I almost wore my house slippers to the store, making it impossible to cut a rug. I can rip it up now, my favorite flats used to have thin straps across the top, I broke one then cut the other off, the shoes feel better now. 

I wanna dance to loud music all night long.

He is just a baby but he could feel the tension between Mommy and Daddy. I hope we eat soon, he thought.

Best friends laugh together so loud and hard. Faces red. Bellies aching. The laughter lasted a long time. Both friends have forgotten what was so funny in the first place. They laugh another few minutes anyway.

Laughter is contagious.

The man asking passerbys for money smelled of raw onions, rotten fish, burnt plastic, and Toe jam. He began to laugh too. Belly empty, feet blistered and bloody. Hair matted. Black dirt from head to toe.

What does the beggar have to laugh about?

Laughter was the last sound before falling into a deep sleep.

Nights like this I wish you were here with me to hold me close and discuss religion.

God bless us all.

"Life Sucks and is so Beautiful." - Warner Bailey

National Poetry Month Day 2

Photo by
jaymantri

Today’s prompt (optional, as always) is based on this poem by Claire Wahmanholm, which transforms the natural world into an unsettled dream-place. One way it does this is by asking questions – literally. The poem not only contains questions, but ends on a question. Today, I’d like to challenge you to write a poem that similarly resists closure by ending on a question, inviting the reader to continue the process of reading (and, in some ways, writing) the poem even after the poem ends.

Happy writing!

I get my prompts here!

National Poetry Month Day 1

Hello, everyone! Happy April, and happy first day of National/Global Poetry Writing Month!

(I totally spaced and now I'm 5 days behind. Lol! Classic Warner Bailey.)

If you’re just joining us, Na/GloPoWriMo is an annual challenge in which participants write a poem a day during the month of April. What do you need to do to participate? Just write a poem each day! If you fall behind, try to catch up, but don’t be too hard on yourself – the idea here is to expand your writing practice and engage with new ideas, not to stress yourself out. All too many poets, regardless of their level of experience, get blocked in their writing because they start editing even before they have written anything at all. Let’s leave the editing, criticizing, and stressing out for May and beyond! This month, the idea is just to get something on the page.

If you’ll be posting your efforts to a blog or other website, you can provide us with the link using our “Submit Your Site” form, and it will show up on our “Participants’ Sites” page. But if you’re not going to be posting your work, no worries! It’s not a requirement at all – again, all we’re really trying to do is encourage people to write.

To help with that, we’ll be providing some daily inspiration. Each day, we’ll be featuring a participant, providing you with an optional prompt, and giving you an extra poetry resource. This year, those resources will take the form of poetry-related videos.

And now, without further ado – let’s get to it!

Our first featured participant is Miss Ella’s House of Sleep, whose poem “Annie Edson Taylor’s Birthday Plunge,” used our early-bird prompt to explore a fascinating and little-known historical figure.

Our resource for the day is a short film of January Gill O’Neil reading (and acting out!) her poem “How to Make a Crab Cake.” If you’d like to read the poem itself as you follow along, you can find it here.

For our first (optional) prompt, let’s take our cue from O’Neil’s poem, and write poems that provide the reader with instructions on how to do something. It can be a sort of recipe, like O’Neil’s poem. Or you could try to play on the notorious unreliability of instructional manuals (if you’ve ever tried to put IKEA furniture together, you know what I mean). You could even write a dis-instruction poem, that tells the reader how not to do something. This well-known poem by John Ashbery may provide you with some additional inspiration.

Happy writing!

I get my prompts from here!

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1+1 Doesn't Always Equal 2

Family.

Family is what you make it.

2 people who never knew each other

Meet.

A union is born and soon after so are children.

Bloods mix.

A line of heritage.

Relations.

Labels are assigned.

Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, Sister, Bother, Cousin, Uncle, Aunt, Greats, and Grands.

A Family, created from scratch, homegrown, stranger turned friend turned Husband and Wife, Parents and Kids.

What makes a family member more important than a friend?

What makes a Family in the first place then?

- Warner Bailey

"Life Sucks and is so Beautiful."