Day Seven #Na/GloPoWriMo

Day 7 Prompt:

In her poem, “Front Yard Rhyme,” Cecily Parks evokes the sing-songy beats that accompany girls’ clapping games, and jump-rope and skipping rhymes. Today, we challenge you to write your own poem that emulates these songs – something to snap, clap, and jump around to.

Thank you for visiting, for reading and for your wonderful comments dear readers and fellow poets. 

Day Six #Na/GloPoWriMo

Day 6 Prompt:

Our daily resource is Nobel-winning poet Louise Glück’s essay, “Against Sincerity.” Here, Glück muses on the difference between honesty and truth, and how, in poetry, words that ring true are not necessarily those that are “honest” in the sense of recounting events as they happened. After all, a poem isn’t a newspaper article. Making art means selecting, trimming, choosing, exaggerating, and even deceiving, all in service of a goal that differs from a bare recitation of facts.

And now, to put theory in our practice, here’s our optional prompt! This one takes its inspiration from Yentl van Stokkum’s poem, “It’s the Warmest Summer on Record Babe,” which blends casual, almost blasé phrasing with surreal events like getting advice from a bumblebee. In your poem today, try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream.

 

Day Five #Na/GloPoWriMo

The day started with zero ideas. Then I read Kim Russel's Don't walk, swim. 

My poem today started off silly and overdramatic (as per prompt) but then it decided to go somewhere else. Here goes...

Day 5 Prompt:

And now, here’s our prompt for the day — totally optional, as usual. The Roman poet Catullus wrote a famous two-line poem:

Odi et amo: quare id faciam fortasse requiris.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

Here’s an English translation.

                I hate and I love. Why do I do this, you ask?
                I don’t know, but I feel it happening and am tortured.

I thought about this poem the other day when I read a social media post collecting sentences from Charles Darwin’s letters, including:

                “Oh my God how do I hate species & varieties.”

                “I am very tired, very stomachy & hate nearly the whole world.”

                “I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything.”

                “I hate myself, I hate clover, and I hate bees.”

                “I am languid & bedeviled & hate writing & hate everybody.”

I must confess, the idea of being so grumpy that you have come to hate clover and bees is highly amusing to me. Today, your challenge is to take a page from Catullus and Darwin, and write a poem in which you talk about disliking something – particularly something utterly innocuous, like clover. Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.

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Thank you for visiting my blog. And special thanks to those of you who grace me with their comments. 

Zekreet, November 2025

Day Four #Na/GloPoWriMo

Day 4 Prompt: 

In his poem, “Spring Thunder,” Mark van Doren brings us a short, haunting evocation of weather and the change in seasons. Today, we’d like to challenge you to craft your own short poem that involves a weather phenomenon and some aspect of the season. Try using rhyme and keeping your lines of roughly even length.

Thank you for visiting. Day 4 poem has been removed. 

Day Three #Na/GloPoWriMo

#Na/GloPoWriMo 

Day 3 Prompt

And now, last but not least, here is today’s optional prompt. In his poem, “Treasure Hunt,” Prabodh Parikh brings us a refreshingly different view of what being a poet is like – that is, if you grew up on the cultural notion of poets being wan and ethereal, or ill and doomed. Parikh’s boisterous pirate of a poet might be an “unreliable” character, but seems like he’d be the life of any party, and quite satisfied with his existence. Today, we challenge you to write a poem in which a profession or vocation is described differently than it typically is considered to be. Perhaps your poem will feature a very relaxed brain surgeon, or a farmer that hates vegetables. Or maybe you have a poetical alter-ego of your own, who flies a non-wan, treasure-hunting flag with pride.

The poem has been removed. Thank you for visiting. 

Day Two #Na/GloPoWriMo

#Na/GloPoWriMo 

 Day 2 Prompt: 

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.

The poem for Day 2 has been removed. But here's the link to the featured poet: aetherianessence

Thank you for visiting. For more writing by yours truly, visit my website: www.arti-jain.com

Last month's full moon, Doha, Qatar.

Day one #Na/GloPoWriMo

Dear Readers,

I hope you've been well. This is my first blogpost of 2026. I've been more absent than present in blogsphere. 

So, what better way to spring into action than to jump into a challenge to write a poem a day.

The NaPoWriMo site has a tag line: There is so much to discover.

Despite the demands on my time this April, I've decided to open up to muchness and discovery. 

In order to make this challenge easier for myself, I've decided to give myself an hour (and no more) after I've read the prompt to write and share. Therefore, these poems will be first drafts. I am taking off the scaffolding of rewrites and second, third thoughts this time. I plan to catch up on reading other poets last thing at night. Hopefully, I can keep up. Wish me luck.

Also, I will take these poems down after a week of posting, so that I'm able to submit their best versions to poetry journals, sometime in the not so distant future. 

Day 1 prompt:

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own tanka – or multi-tanka poem. Theme and tone are up to you, but try to maintain the five-line stanza and syllable count.  The tanka is an ancient Japanese poetic form. In contemporary English versions, it often takes the shape of a five-line poem with a 5 / 7 / 5 / 7 / 7 syllable-count – kind of like a haiku that decided to keep going. 

I've removed my tanka.

But sharing a poem by Rahul Gaur who was the featured participant on Day One.