The Poetry Marathon

For this prompt, re-imagine a fairy tale or a myth. Take the general plot of one well known story and change one key component. It could be the gender of the characters, the ending, or just one of the important details contained within the story.

Title a poem as you would start a letter with Dear “insert name here”, then go on to write a poem to the person whose name you used. That person could be real or fully imagined. The contents of the poem could contain truth or fiction, but you must keep in mind the duel nature of this poem, it is a letter as well as a poem.

Use the following image to inspire your next poem.

Death is the theme of many poems and the preoccupation of many poets. Still after all this time poets are churning out new and intriguing approaches to death in poetry.

The goal of this prompt is to write a poem about death. The death you write about could be imagined, personified, personal, true, or false. The details of this prompt are entirely up to you.

Pick 5 of these 8 words and use them in your next poem.

Piano

Ferns

Lantern

Beech

Boots

Laughter

Jars

Clear

Read the following excerpt from Caryolyn Forche’s poem Elegy (from the book angel of History) and when that excerpt ends write your own poem from that  point.

Start by writing what you imagine the next line to be and go from there. When you finish the poem, remove the excerpt of Elegy or move it off to the side and put it in quotes, with her name and the name of the poem.

This is the excerpt:

The page opens to snow on a field: boot holed month, black hour/ the bottle in your coat half vodka half winter light./ To what and to whom does one say yes?

Write a poem in five parts. The sections can be numbered or named but they must all be clearly separated from each other within the poem as a whole.

Happy writing!

Good morning poets!

Your first prompt (should you need one) is this:

Listen to Cat Steven’s song Morning Has Broken. You can listen to it here, but make sure you ignore the video.

Don’t do anything while the song is playing, but after it is over start writing at once.

Hopefully everyone is up, turning on their computers, pulling out their note pads, and maybe even sipping on a little coffee right now.

The Poetry Marathon has begun! So start writing! Good Luck!

The Poetry Marathon starts in one hour!