The Poetry Marathon

Text Prompt

Redacting is the act of censoring or obscuring part of a text. Sometimes it is done by the author themselves, and more often it is done by someone else.

I want you to write a poem and then during or after writing the poem choose at least one, or ideally five or more words to redact from the poem. How is the poem changed by this simple act? This is not the same as a “black out” or erasure poem”. The words you are using are your own, and well over 50% of them should be visible.

When writing on physical paper, you can do this easily with a marker, ideally a black sharpie. If you are writing your poem in a Word document, you can use the highlight feature and set the highlight color to black, this creates a black box over the word or words. Or you can just write the word redacted in place of the word you wanted to use.

Image Prompt

Photo by Jon Tyson

Text Prompt

Describe your profession through a funny/humourous poem.

Contributed by Bhasha Dwivedi.

Image Prompt

Photo by Brandon Wong

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

In the past I have personally verified that everyone who applied for a certificate was eligible and then I would make a certificate. Due to how big the marathon has grown, this is no longer possible. Now we operate  on the honor system.

If you completed the Poetry Half Marathon please consider the following certificate yours, to update with your name, to print if you choose to do so. If you need any help altering the certificate please email me at poets@thepoetrymarathon.com.

You are welcome to use this tool to get the certificate with your name on it.

Congratulations again on your completion of The Half Marathon.

The visual example of what the certificate will look like is right below this text.

Also this year we will be putting together two anthologies.

The print anthology will be edited by Blessing Omeiza Ojo, a terrific poet (you can read one of his poems here) and a long time participant in the marathon. For the first time ever there will be rejections for the print edition. He will pick between 80-100 poems to publish in the anthology. This is the last time that the co-founders of the poetry marathon, are paying for the print anthology, and the last time we will formally be “in charge” of any anthology. You can learn more about why, here.

That being said the wonderful poetry marathon community is already stepping up, and Erin Lorandos, another long time marathoner and compelling poet (you can read one of her poems here), is putting together an electronic anthology that includes everyone’s work

Submissions for the print anthology will be open from the 18th through the 30th of September. Submissions for the electronic anthology will be open between the 7th and 21st of October. More details about both anthologies will be forthcoming soon.

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 towards covering the cost of the marathon.

Want to know what The 2022 Poetry Marathon Anthology was like? Pick up your copy here.

Text Prompt

Closets are a big deal inside a house, but also metaphorically. One can be in the closet, or come out of it, for example, But they are also places of safety and joy for small children, or where a monster is lurking, depending on the small child, and/or time of day.

There are very few poems about closets, but this is your chance to write one about the closet, metaphorical or physical or both.

Image Prompt

Mandala drawn by Vidya Shankar (this is the full image that we ended up using for the cover of the 2022 Poetry Marathon Anthology)

Text Prompt

“Extraordinary in Ordinary”- pick an ordinary object and make it extraordinary. You can do it by giving it some special attributes or a different background and story.

Contributed by Bhasha Dwivedi.

Image Prompt:

Photo by Tim Foster

Text Prompt

The first three words of your title should be “what is love”. That can be your whole title, in and of itself, probably followed by a question mark, or you can add more context onto the title before proceeding to the poem itself.

Image Prompt

Photo by Andrew Shaughnessy

Text Prompt:

Below is a list of ten words. Please pick at least five of them to use in your poem. If you want to use all ten, please do so.

beet

jacket

tremor

bayou

elbow

lightbulb

cinnamon

bucket

elk

carport

Image Prompt

Photo by Diane Carmony

(Not exactly a) Text Prompt

Every year I include a song prompt. The idea is that you start the song and write a poem while listening to it, starting the song over as needed (or not).  There have been protests in the past when I include one with lyrics, so this year I’ve included one with lyrics that you can listen to here and one without, which you can listen to here. No titles or artists given to increase the element of surprise.

Image Prompt

Photo by Tianhao Wang

Text Prompt:

Every year I made sure to include at least one formal poem. The viator is a poetic form invented by Robin Skelton. I first encountered it as part of Robert Lee Brewer’s Writer’s Digest Poetic Forms Friday series.

It’s a pretty simple form where the first line is used again as refrain in the second line of the second stanza, and the third line of the third stanza, and so on and so forth depending on how many stanzas you include.

The last line of the final stanza must be the refrain, so you start and end on it.

To learn more about this form, and read a sample poem, go here.

Image Prompt:

Photo by Martin Torrez

Text Prompt

The earth is actually flat, you look over the edge and what do you see? Describe it.

Disclaimer: I am in no way, shape, or form a flat-earther.

Image Prompt

photo by Y S