Text Prompt:
Write a mystery poem. The crime could be real or imagined. The poem could be clue based or narrative. The details are up to you.
Image Prompt:
By Martin Torrez
The Poetry Marathon
Prompt for Hour Four
Text prompt:
Nancy Anne Smith suggested this subject for a prompt we do every year. Your challenge is to write a poem about the topic of marriage, without ever using the word marriage, and while also ideally avoiding the words spouse, husband, and wife.
Image prompt:
Prompt for Hour Three
Text Prompt:
This prompt called Twenty Little Poetry Projects and was suggested by Lexanne Leonard, but was created by Jim Simmerman and is called Twenty Little Poetry Projects and was originally published in The Practice of Poetry. If you don’t think you can complete it in the hour feel free to stop at the half way point.
“Give each project at least one line. You should open the poem with the first project, and close it with the last, but otherwise use the projects in whatever order you like. Do all twenty. Let different ones be in different voices. Don’t take things too seriously.
1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synaesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use a piece of false cause-and-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of “talk” you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun)…”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he/she could not do in “real life.”
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a nonhuman object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.”
Image Prompt:
By Frank Ching
Prompt for Hour Two
Text Prompt:
Write a poem from the point of view of yourself, ten years ago.
Image Prompt:
Prompt for Hour One
For the third year in a row we are offering word and image prompts. The first prompt every hour will be text based (with occasional variations), and the second, if you scroll down, will be image based. You can choose either prompt or not use prompts at all (or only sporadically). All images are either taken from unsplash, or contributed by a poetry marathoner with credit.
Text Prompt:
Lately I’ve been finding a lot of inspiration in the work of others.
Often when I read a poem, there will be a line (or 5) that sounds spectacular and presents a really interesting idea, but then doesn’t explore it.
One of these lines is from the poems Selkie Weaning Young (Redux) by Diana Khoi Nguyen. The line that particularly stands out to me as containing multitudes is: “This is how she found us/ the past draped about us like a cloak”
You can read the whole poem (it’s short!) to see if there is another jumping off point for you, but if you do end up using the line in your poem, make sure to say “after Diana Khoi Nguyen” in a right alligned line after the title. That way the original poet still receives credit for their idea.
Image prompt:
Photo credit, Birk Enwald
Last Chance to Sign up for the 2023 Poetry Marathon
This is the last day to sign up for the 2023 Poetry Marathon! You can sign up here. We will be sending out the final round of acceptances tomorrow. If you do not here from us tomorrow, please send us an email at poets@thepoetrymarathon.com
The goal of The Poetry Marathon is to write and post one poem an hour for 24 hours. Half marathoners post a poem per hour for a 12 hour period. You can catch up if you miss an hour, but you cannot get ahead.
This is an international event with participants from all around the globe. Generally 500 people attempt the marathon. You do not have to be a poet to participate. To find out how to convert your timezone go here.
To learn more go here. To sign up go here.
We will get back to applicants on a rolling basis. Most people who apply will be accepted. If you have not heard from us three days after applying please send us an email at poets@poetrymarathon.com. Please do not try and contact us through the FB page.
Sign up for the 2023 Poetry Marathon!
Sign up is now open for the 2023 Poetry Marathon! You can sign up here.
The 2023 Poetry Marathon starts at 9 AM ET on Saturday September 2nd and will go till 9 AM ET on Sunday the 3rd of September.
Those who are interested in doing a half marathon start at 9 AM ET on September 2nd and go till 9 PM on that same day. Or they can start at 9 PM ET on the 2nd and continue to 9 AM on the 3rd, which works better for some time zones.
The goal of The Poetry Marathon is to write and post one poem an hour for 24 hours. Half marathoners post a poem per hour for a 12 hour period. You can catch up if you miss an hour, but you cannot get ahead.
This is an international event with participants from all around the globe. Generally 500 people attempt the marathon. You do not have to be a poet to participate. To find out how to convert your timezone go here.
There is a new prompt offered every hour. Some find this Helpful, some ignore it completely.
To learn more go here.
To sign up go here.
If you are interested in participating please sign up by the 28th of August. We will get reach out to applicants on the 11th, the 18th, and the 29th of August depending on when they apply. Most people who apply will be accepted. If you have not heard from us by the 30th of August. Please do not try and contact us through the FB page. We will try our best to make sure everyone who contacts us, gets an opportunity to participate.
2023 Poetry Marathon Anthology Updates
We’ve always struggled a little with how to make the anthology work. When there were fewer Poetry Marathoners, it was a hard but sustainable effort. As the marathon grew, we realized we’d have to change our strategic approach to it. That’s why we started to pay guest editors. This helped a little bit, but with Amazon’s continual shifts in terms of how they were running their print on demand operations, things were still fairly complicated. With increasing participants and submissions the anthology become even more unwieldy and increasingly expensive for us to publish and for any of the contributors to get their hands on.
Last year, Jacob and I discussed stopping the Anthology entirely, but decided instead to try and see if hiring two editors made the job more manageable. It very much did help, but it wasn’t enough in the end, and even after hiring others to help with layout the project took much longer than expected, with many things going wrong and the whole process was very expensive. For reasons that Amazon has never disclosed, they still haven’t distributed it properly this year and it is only available on the UK version of the website. Although if you are in Canada, Indigo has it available for order, finally.
It hasn’t helped that we’ve been running a time consuming business (which has made funding all this possible), and have had to face a wide range of personal issues this year.
The anthology was not part of my original vision for the Poetry Marathon, but I have always been grateful for Jacob coming up with the idea, because it is many individual’s first experience with submission and publication and because I love the range and creativity of work in the anthologies.
We’ve put a lot of thoughts into next steps, and we’ve also gotten some very thoughtful feedback from the community on this.
This year is going to be the last time (for the foreseeable future) that we officially put out a Poetry Marathon Anthology, and it’s going to be a little different.
Blessing Omeiza Ojo, a gifted poet and a long time participant in the marathon, will be the editor of this anthology and he will pick between 80-100 poems to publish in the anthology. This means that for the first time submissions will have to be rejected, which is something we were reluctant to do, because our priority with the marathon is to be as open as possible to all.
That being said, based on community feedback, and hopefully with community support, we are asking anyone who is interested in helping edit/produce/publish a digital/online version of the anthology, reach out to us at poets@thepoetrymarathon.com.
Our greatest hope is that someone will put together a board of sorts to support the Poetry Marathon Anthology in the future. This year their focus will only be on curating a digital anthology that hopefully reflects the voices of all poetry marathoners, but going forward they might end up running the Poetry Marathon Anthology as a separate but related entity.
We are very grateful for the insight the community has already provided into this shift, and while we know this change hasn’t been ideal or perfect for anyone (ourselves included), we know that it has to be made. It’s more than the cost for us, but the time and effort we put into the Marathon is already great – and that’s where our focus really needs to be moving forward. The event itself is very much our priority and focus.
We welcome feedback and thoughts on these developments, and we are grateful as always for the community that makes the marathon possible.
The 2023 Poetry Marathon Schedule
We will open up to applications for the 2023 Poetry Marathon on August 7th and stay open till August 28th. We except to say yes to all serious applicants, as we do every year.
The marathon itself will take place on September 2nd and 3rd. The first half marathon and full marathon will start at 9 AM ET, and the second half marathon will start at 9 PM ET. The marathon as a whole will be over on September 3rd at 9 AM.
Save the date for the 2023 Poetry Marathon!
Save the date! The 2023 Poetry Marathon will start on September 2cd at 9AM ET and go to September 3rd 9AM. The half marathon will end on September 2cd at 9PM.