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
The Poetry Marathon
Prompt for Hour Ten
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
Prompt for Hour Nine
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
Prompt for Hour Eight
(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
Prompt for Hour Seven
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
Prompt for Hour Six
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
Prompt for Hour Five
Text Prompt:
Write a mystery poem. The crime could be real or imagined. The poem could be clue based or narrative. The details are up to you.
Image Prompt:
By Martin Torrez
Prompt for Hour Four
Text prompt:
Nancy Anne Smith suggested this subject for a prompt we do every year. Your challenge is to write a poem about the topic of marriage, without ever using the word marriage, and while also ideally avoiding the words spouse, husband, and wife.
Image prompt:
Prompt for Hour Three
Text Prompt:
This prompt called Twenty Little Poetry Projects and was suggested by Lexanne Leonard, but was created by Jim Simmerman and is called Twenty Little Poetry Projects and was originally published in The Practice of Poetry. If you don’t think you can complete it in the hour feel free to stop at the half way point.
“Give each project at least one line. You should open the poem with the first project, and close it with the last, but otherwise use the projects in whatever order you like. Do all twenty. Let different ones be in different voices. Don’t take things too seriously.
1. Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2. Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3. Use at least one image for each of the five senses, either in succession or scattered randomly throughout the poem.
4. Use one example of synaesthesia (mixing the senses).
5. Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6. Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7. Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8. Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9. Use a piece of false cause-and-effect logic.
10. Use a piece of “talk” you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction: “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun)…”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he/she could not do in “real life.”
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense, such that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a nonhuman object say or do something human (personification).
20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem.”
Image Prompt:
By Frank Ching
Prompt for Hour Two
Text Prompt:
Write a poem from the point of view of yourself, ten years ago.
Image Prompt:
