Text Prompt
“Look in your cupboards and find a food that brings up a childhood memory, and the memory is your prompt” – contributed by Deborah Dalton
Image Prompt
Photo by Dylan Shaw on Unsplash
Prompts for Hour Nine
The Poetry Marathon
Prompts for the Eighth Hour
Text Prompt
Every year we have a new form prompt, and this year, it’s the Gigan, which is an invented form. There’s a detailed blog post about it here, and it includes an example Gigan, which always helps.
Gigans must be 16 lines in length with seven stanzas (each stanza is separated by a line break). It goes couplet (two lines), tercet (three lines), couplet, couplet, couplet, tercet, couplet.
The first line is also the eleventh line, line six is repeated as line 12 as well.
Optionally the closing couplet should put a twist on the poem, but that isn’t a requirement.
Image Prompt
Photo contributed by Ofuma Agali.
Prompts for the Seventh Hour
A Sort of Text Prompt
Look on your phone and find the 10th non selfie picture and use that as your prompt. – Prompt by Deborah Dalton
Image Prompt
Photo by Marc A. Sporys on Unsplash
Prompts for the Sixth Hour
Text Prompt
Write a letter to yourself from the perspective of someone who is no longer in your life. It could be a former teacher you admired but you lost touch with, someone you knew from childhood, someone who passed on, etc. The specifics are very much up to you.
Image Prompt
Photo by Melissa Keizer on Unsplash
Prompts for the Fourth Hour
Text Prompt
Write a poem set a hundred years ago, or a hundred years from now.
Image Prompt
Photo by Xavier von Erlach on Unsplash
Prompts for the Third Hour
Not exactly a text prompt
Listen to the following song before writing a poem, you can also play it again and write with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5j1AwBaPtk
Image Prompt
Prompts For the Second Hour
Text Prompt
Read Robert Frost’s poem Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening, chose one line or phrase, and with credit, write a poem with that line or phrase in it. Prompt partially contributed by Se Johnson.
Image Prompt
Photo by Rayson Tan on Unsplash
Prompts for the First Hour
For the second year in a row we are offering word and image prompts. The first prompt every hour will be text based (with occasional variations), and the second, if you scroll down, will be image based. You can choose either prompt or not use prompts at all (or only sporadically). All images are either taken from unsplash, or contributed by a poetry marathoner with credit.
Text Prompt
Write a poem about being in water. It can be about swimming, the shower, a bath, the rain, etc.
Image Prompt
Photo by Valentin Salja on Unsplash
Last Chance to Sign Up for the Poetry Marathon
This is the last day to sign up for the 2022 Poetry Marathon! You can sign up here. We will be sending out the final round of acceptances tomorrow. If you do not here from us tomorrow, please send us an email at poets@thepoetrymarathon.com
The marathon itself will start at 9 AM ET on the 25th of June and go till 9 AM on 26th. Half marathoners can start at 9 AM ET or 9 PM ET on the 25th.
This is an international event with participants from all around the globe. Generally 500 people attempt the marathon. You do not have to be a poet to participate. To find out how to convert your timezone go here.
To learn more go here. To sign up go here.
We will get back to applicants on a rolling basis. Most people who apply will be accepted. If you have not heard from us three days after applying please send us an email at poets@poetrymarathon.com. Please do not try and contact us through the FB page.