We’re excited to announce the dates for the 2025 Poetry Marathon! This year will be another chance to write one poem per hour for 12 or 24 hours, with a truly international contingent of poets. As always, this will be a completely free event.
The 2025 Poetry Marathon and Half Marathon will start on May 17th. The full marathon will continue on to the 18th.
As per usual the marathon will start at 9 AM ET on Saturday the 17th and end at 9 AM ET on Sunday the 178h. Half marathoners can start at 9 AM ET or 9 PM ET on Saturday the 17th. We use ET as the starting time because many Marathoners are in that time zone, but please check the time at date in your own time zone before marking it on the calendar.
We will open up registration on the 22nd of April at 9 AM and it will close at 9 PM on May the 9th. If you want to participate please sign up during this period. The registration form will be hosted here, starting on the 22nd od April.
I am looking forward to joining this event. I was able to complete last year’s event.
Can’t wait to be part of the marathon again this year! This is one of those exercises I recommend to writers and poets alike to get the creativity goin’ and flowin’…TY for hosting and putting all the work into organizing it again!
Good evening. Never having participated in the Marathon before, I have lots of questions, but I’ll only ask a couple here.. First, are there rules? When given the prompts, are the poems to be completed in a specific time frame – say, before the next prompt is issued? When you say that the Marathon will be hosted on Circle … I think that I don’t really know what that is. Unless it is program we are working with in the workshop I’m now taking. I’m a person who really does need to prepare to do this kind of activity. In other words, I do need specifics, if they are available. I’m finding that this kind of discipline is of great help to me. Thanks for your time.
The only real rules for the marathon are: one poem an hour, no working ahead. The kind of poem, the subject, all of that is up to you.
I’ve done the full marathon twice now successfully, and it’s grueling. You can do prep work on poems (such as brainstorming ideas, outlining time, etc.), so long as you don’t work on the poems themselves in advance.
Last year, I decided to do every poem in a different style to try to expand my knowledge of different kinds of poetry. This year, my plan is to do an Epic with each submission linking together to form a full Arthurian-style poem.
As for Circle, I’m sure they’ll give more information when registration starts (which is later this week). Hope this helps!
Marj, Yes, it’s on the same platform, and the only real rules are that you should write one poem an hour and post it during that hour (you can catch up if you need to but not get ahead).
Kiba, I love that you did every poem in a different style last year.