The Poetry Marathon

Write about your mother’s clothes.

We are in the home stretch! There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Your prompt is to write a poem that contains a metaphor involving food. The metaphor could be an aside or it could be the focus of the poem. The choice is up to you.

For hour nineteen write a sonnet.

Caesar Crossing the Rubicon by Wilhelm Trubner, is one of my favorite paintings. Unlike most paintings of titled Caesar Crossing the Rubicon does not feature an army led by Caesar, instead it is a painting of a dog eying food on a table. I have posted it below.

Your prompt is to write a poem with a stereotypical title for a poem or painting, but the poem itself does not comply with the expectations raised by the title.

For your seventeenth prompt I want you to write a poem about solitude. It could be a poem about solitude under normal circumstances or it could be a poem about extreme solitude, for example being a hermit, or the last person on a life boat.

Architecture figures into a lot of poets work. Stephen Dunn and a number of poets work comes to mind. For this prompt I want you to write a poem about a specific building. It can be in purely visual terms or it can use metaphorical language, or it can be part of a larger narrative.

Below I included two photos of the Brain for inspiration.The Brain is a studio in Seattle, Wa.

Write a lyrical poem that rhymes – it must not contain any narrative.

Write a poem from the third person perspective about something that happened to you personally.

Write a poem with no visual imagery in it whatsoever. Instead rely on your other 4 senses to pull the poem along.

Congratulations Half Marathoners you have completed your task!

12 poems in 12 hours is no easy feat.

If for some reason you feel the urge to continue on, you can join the full marathoners for the next 12 hours. If not, relax and reward yourself for all that hard work

If you completed the half marathon please send us an email (at poets@thepoetrymarathon.com) with your name, email address, and mailing address (for us to mail the certificate of completion to). There is no rush.

In the next week or so we will be in contact with you about the forthcoming anthology chapbooks. Only poets who completed the half and full marathons will be eligible for inclusion in the chapbook. All poets who are in the chapbook will get a complimentary copy shipped to them.

Thank you for writing so many poems in such a short time frame. We look forward to reading them once we recover.