The Poetry Marathon

The prompt for this hour is to write a poem about a missing person. This person could be someone real or someone imagined. Someone you knew, or someone you did not know.

A great way to do this prompt is to go to this website:  http://www.charleyproject.org/

Pick one of the missing people listed there and write a poem about them.

You can use the details available on the site and you can embellish if you wish. All of the specifics are up to you. You don’t even have to mention that they are missing in the finished poem.

Congratulations Half Marathoners! I am so happy that you have completed 12 poems in 12 hours! That is wonderful. Thank you for joining us in this madness.

If you completed the half 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 2nd.

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.

Half Poetry Marathoners, this is your last prompt! Congratulations!

Poetry Marathoners, you are almost half way through! Congratulations and Good luck!

This hour your prompt is to write a poem containing at least five of the following eight words:

Moon

Lake

Glory

Jeep

Breastbone

Spare

Canopy

Panic

Write a persona poem from the point of view of a person without a home. You can have a specific person in mind, or they can be entirely imagined. This person can be a homeless beggar, or someone who drifts from town to town, or someone who just can’t imagine settling in one place, so they don’t.

Write a poem of praise. It can be praising a person, a place, or a thing (right now I feel like praising coffee). But this poem should be filled with admiration and gratitude.

Write a poem about or involving one of the following images.

The dreaded form prompt! This year I scheduled it a lot earlier in the marathon. This year the prompt has to do with my favorite form, the pantoum.

The pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a villanelle in that there are repeating lines throughout the poem. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next.

Now in case that all was a little much for you, here is a link to a pantoum generator Jacob made: http://jacobjans.com/pantoum.html

The key to writing a pantoum is to write about something that either obsesses you, or something that automatically requires some sort of repetition (ie cooking).

If you want to the repeated lines can include some new words, but they should still be recognizable.

Here are two good example pantoums:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/56284

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/parents-pantoum

Each year I write one prompt devoted to a cliché topic, previously these prompts have been focused on love and death.

This year the challenge is to write a poem about angst that is not cliché. Good luck!

This next prompt is inspired by a dear friend of mine (who is a past poetry marathon participant). The challenge is to write an English haibun.

A haibun is a traditional Japanese form that combines prose and haiku. The prose section should be approached like prose poetry and every word should be made to count. Most poets suggest that the prose section should be no more than 120 words, but if you want to make it longer go for it.

Then end with a Haiku. The haiku should serve as the climax or epiphany to the text that proceeds it.

Traditionally an English haiku is three lines the first being 5 syllables long, the second being 7, and the third being 5. Traditionally a haiku is about nature, but yours does not have to be.

You can learn more about the haibun and read some examples here.

Write a poem about technology. The details are entirely up to you.