The Poetry Marathon

The prompt for hour eight is to write a golden shovel. Not familiar with the form? That is not surprising, it was created in 2010 by the poet Terrance Hayes in his poem The Golden Shovel.

It is pretty simple though. First you take a line or lines from a poem you admire.

Use each word from the line(s) as the end word of each of the lines in your poem. So for example if you used a line with ten words, your poem should be ten lines long.

Keep those words in order.

Give credit to the original poet.

Below is an example. The original line inspiring it is “Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone” by W.H. Auden

When you asked me yesterday to stop

at the top of the hill and look out at all

the cliffs that form the walls of the

valley, I shook my head and pointed at the clocks.

Now I want nothing more but to cut

work with you, to take every hour off

to be spent on the trail, in a hammock, in the

pool, anything. For the person to be you, on the other side of the ringing telephone.

“Write a poem from the inside out.”

This prompt was submitted by Jo Eckler and is as she phrased it “Purposefully vague”

Set a timer for one minute and write a stanza. Stop the timer. Clear your mind.

Set a timer for 90 seconds and write another stanza. Clear your mind.

Set a timer for 2 minutes and write another stanza.

Go back and edit all the stanzas.  You can add extra stanza breaks or add section breaks. After you finish editing you can choose to do another timer session or two, or not.

Write a poem about a specific location that meant a lot to you as a child or teenager that you have not returned to in many years. It could be a house, a park, a country, anywhere that had particular significance. The focus of the poem could be on the location itself, or it could be on something(s) that happened there, or someone you spent a lot of time with there.

The prompt for this hour is to write a four stanza poem. The stanzas can be as long or short as you want them to be. In each of the stanzas, you most repeat one of the lines in the first stanza. It can be the same line repeated in each stanza or a different line in each stanza.  This can have a dramatically different effect, depending on the length of the line and the length of the stanza.

Choose one of these images to write about. You don’t have to describe what is going on in the image (although you can if you want to). It is just the jumping off point.

How do we share yearnings when we cannot speak of them? For additional context and inspiration you can listen to Leonard Cohen’s song “Take this Longing”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqVvNpcX5HQ&feature=youtu.be

Prompt contributed by Ramona Elke

Write a a poem in which the four elements (Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water) play an important part.

Contributed by Bhasha Dwivedi.

The Poetry Marathon is a yearly event where poets write 24 poems in 24 hours. There is also a half marathon option where poets write 12 poems in 12 hours. The full marathon goes from 9 AM ET on August 5th till 9AM ET on August 6th. There are two half marathon options. One starting at 9 AM ET on August 5th and the second starting at 9 PM ET on August 6th. To learn more about the marathon visit our main page here.

You can apply to register from today, July the 20th, through midnight eastern time on the 25th of July.

All applications are made through this form. (Follow the link to sign up)

If you have any questions please email us at poets@thepoetrymarathon.com

If this is your first marathon or half marathon, you have probably never done anything like this before. Even though this a writing event, you should treat it like you would running a marathon, albeit one you don’t necessarily have to be in great physical shape for.

Training for it is an important component for many. Lots of participates set aside an hour a day to write poems during the week leading up to the marathon. Others practice with test quarter marathons. Some just practice writing poems with a timer.

It is also important that you set aside time for The Poetry Marathon. Some people attempt the marathon while doing other things, like working an eight hour shift, or being the hostess at a friends wedding. This has historically not worked out well for anyone and leads to complaining and quitting.

A repeat half marathoner has done the poetry half marathon and a running half marathon in the same day successfully, but that is because the timing worked out. The events did not overlap.

As someone who is now on their fifth marathon, I know that not only should my day of the marathon be well-planned, but the day before and after should be too. As the mother of a young child (whose husband also participates in the marathon), I make sure to have childcare arranged for the whole marathon and at least five hours afterwards, so that we can sleep a little.

All our food is prepared in advance. I generally run, do yoga or other forms of exercise between writing poems.

But everyone does the marathon differently. For example my husband naps as much as possible between writing poems.

Expect the marathon to take a lot out of you. Many writers say it is much harder than they expected. Recovering after the marathon should take at least a day. Sometimes longer.

Ramona Elke, a participant in last year’s Poetry Marathon, wrote an excellent blog post that every new participant should read: http://lovedrovemetorebel.blogspot.com/2017/03/so-youre-thinking-of-participating-in.html

Last year over 500 people signed up. Less than half the people finished either the half or full marathon. This year we want a much higher success rate even if we have a much lower sign up rate. That is why we added this essay of warning.

Now, if you are wondering after reading all of this, why you would possibly do the marathon, I want to tell you three things.

1. Most Poetry Marathoners don’t do this once, they do it year after year after year. They put it on their calendars when we announce the date in January.
2. I can’t explain in advance everything that you will get out of the marathon, as everyone gets something different, but just know it will be something special.
3. Every year the biggest blessing for me is 24 new poems that are different from what I normally write. Every year I have published edited versions of over half the poems I produced during the marathon in literary journals. Poems I have written during the Marathon have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net.

So please sign up! But only if you are really prepared to commit.

Caitlin Jans

Marathon Co-Founder