The Poetry Marathon

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

Thank you for all the helpful feedback we received to the first updates post! Based on that feedback we have a few announcements to make.

There will be an anthology this year!

It will be similar to last years because we will do our best to include one poem by everyone who submits. The only major difference is that the submission period is shorter and starts sooner after the anthology is over. The submission period will go from August 10-15th.

Because the period is sooner you have to submit your information to get a certificate by August 9th.

Part of the reason everything is moved up in terms of time, is that I think it will work better and allow us to get the anthology out quicker.

The other reason is that I am co-organizing a poetry festival in late September in Bellingham Washington, so I have even more work on my already busy plate.

There will be two half marathon starting times!

Thanks to a lot of good feedback and encouragement there will be two half marathon starting points. One as always will start when the first marathon begins at 9AM ET. The second will be right after the first half marathon ends at 9 PM August 5th ET.

This is a terrible time to start if you actually live in the Eastern Time Zone but if you live outside of North America it might work better for you.

The Sign Up Period is Set

You can sign up to participate in the 2017 Poetry Marathon starting July 20th, and it ends July 25th.

There will be a lot more emails warning people about how intense the marathon is (because it is).

Every year The Poetry Marathon is a little different. This year we are figuring out how it will be different.

Last year, as some of you may know, we had more people start the Marathon than every before, but the completion rate was much lower than the year before. 500 people signed up, about 250 for the full marathon, and 250 for the half marathon. Only around 100 completed the full marathon. The success rate for the half marathon was much higher, but still not as good as the previous year.

So this year instead on focusing on growing, we are going to focus on completion rates. We want the majority of the participants to have a complete the marathon, or half marathon – whatever they have committed to.

To that end we are going to make the application sheet ask more specific questions of potential participants. We will also stress on the sign up sheet how much work the marathon is.

The majority of the people we talked to, who had dropped out of the marathon, did so because they did not realize how much time and effort it would involve. It is called a marathon for a reason. So we will also send out emails regarding how to plan for the marathon in the week proceeding it.

If you have any ideas about how we can make it clear how much effort the poetry marathon involves, please send me an email at poets@thepoetrymarathon.com.

We are hoping for the first time to have fewer initial participants but a much higher completion rate.

The Poetry Marathon continues to grow every year.  Every year the diversity of the participants increase. In 2015 individuals living on 6 different continents participated. There were several mother daughter teams. The oldest poet was in their 80s, the youngest was in their teens. Experienced poets who had published books participated as did several people who had never really written poetry before.

During the marathon friendships and communities are formed that last much longer than the marathon itself.

However, what continues to surprise and impress me the most about the Marathon is the quality of work that it produces. By that I don’t mean edited and polished work. (One person dropped out this year because they hated looking at others typo riddled poems.) I mean the quality of the raw material, the poems before polishing.

This year the basics of the marathon will stay the same.

The marathon will take place on August 5th. It will start at 9 AM ET and it will conclude at 9 AM ET on the 6th for full marathoners. The half marathon will run from 9 AM to 9 PM on August 5th. Each poet must write and publish on the blog one poem per hour.

We will have one central Facebook group where poets can meet and encourage each other, before, after, and during the event.

All of the poems will still have to be posted on the central website (although you can remove them as soon as the marathon is over).

Everyone has to register before the marathon in order to participate in the marathon.

Everyone who completes the half or whole marathon will receive a digital certificate to mark their participation.

This is still largely a two person operation. Jacob Jans handles most of the technical aspects of the Marathon and Caitlin Jans handles almost everything else. Keep this in mind when we make mistakes or cannot manage to do everything that we want to do. This is not a large non-profit, this is two poets (with a baby, a dog, and jobs) who try their best.

There will still be a prompt published every hour.

We will again have volunteer commenters after the marathon. This was one of the really great improvements last year. I am very grateful for everyone who volunteered.

However there will be some changes.

The anthology is still up in the air, but it will most likely happen again, with hopefully an August submission period this time. Thus anthology may be different from the other anthologies. It will most likely not include the work of everyone that submits and we would not be able to offer complimentary physical copies to all the contributors (however they would probably be available at cost and digital copies would be available for free). If you want another anthology to happen, even with these conditions in place, please encourage us in that direction.

We will be accepting prompt submissions.

As mentioned before we will really stress the amount of time and work the marathon requires and we may be posting a series of blog posts by past marathoners, to that end.

If you can think of any other changes we should or could make, please email us at poets@thepoetrymarathon.com

The 2016 Poetry Marathon Anthology is now available! You can buy a copy here.

The title says it all. Submissions to the 2016 Poetry Marathon Anthology are closed. I will try to reply to everyone who submitted within the next week,

Submissions for the 2016 Poetry Marathon Anthology opened this morning, the 3rd of September and will stay open till the 12th of September. No submissions will be accepted after that point.

All submissions must include two poems, no more, no less. All submissions must be made via our email address (poets@thepoetrymarathon.com). The subject line of all emails must be Poetry Submission. Poems must be included in the body of the email.

All poems submitted must be written during the 2016 Poetry marathon. All poems should be completely edited and contain no major grammatical errors. You must indicate which hour each poem was written in. Only poets who completed the whole or half marathon will be eligible to submit. If you signed up for the whole marathon and only completed the half, submit as a half marathoner.

There is no guarantee that by submitting to the anthology your poem will be selected.

Digital copies will be made available for free to any contributor. Print copies will be available for a reasonable price and any money that is made from them will go back into the marathon.

Want to know what the 2014 Poetry Marathon Anthology was like? Pick up your copy here.

You did it! Congratulations! I am very impressed! You wrote 24 poems in 24 hours. This is an achievement that few poets ever accomplish. Although if you are a returning marathoner, some of you might be accomplishing it for the second or third time!

Now you should probably go get some sleep.

After every marathon I have participated in I, have been filled with exhaustion but also a tremendous sense of achievement. I hope you have that too.

If you completed the marathon please send us an email in the next couple of days to poets@thepoetrymarathon.com with your full name, the details about what event you participated in (full or half marathon), a link to your marathon blog, and an email address in the body of the email. 

You will not receive a digital certificate if you do not follow those instructions and email poets@thepoetrymarathon.com by September second.

You should receive your digital certificate within two weeks of emailing us.

Also remember that this year we will be putting together a 2016 Poetry Marathon Anthology.

Submissions will open September 3rd and stay open till the 12th.

All submissions must include two poems, no more, no less. All submissions must be made via our email address (poets@thepoetrymarathon.com). The subject line of all emails must be Poetry Submission. Poems must be included in the body of the email.

All poems submitted must be written during the 2016 Poetry marathon. All poems should be completely edited and contain no major grammatical errors. You must indicate which hour each poem was written in. Only poets who completed the whole or half marathon will be eligible to submit.

There is no guarantee that by submitting your poem will be selected although the goal is to include one poem by everyone who submits.

Digital copies will be made available for free to any contributor. Print copies will be available for a reasonable price and any money that is made from them will go back into the marathon.

Want to know what the 2014 Poetry Marathon Anthology was like? Pick up your copy here.

Congratulations – you are almost there.

The last prompt is to write a poem about doing something that others are not doing, such as being awake while those around you are asleep.