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Poetry Challenge 19: Just the Facts

Write a poem that attempts to explain one of the most emotionally intense experiences of your life, or simply an intensely emotional fictional scene, by detailing only the physical action and scenery. Explain how heavy a loss is by how it contorts the features, or how true a love is by how it changes behavior without ever mentioning the heaviness of loss or the trueness of love. Give only the concrete details of what is happening in the scene and let the reader draw the connecting lines.

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Poetry Challenge 18: Continuity Errors

Visual media makes sense to our brains because we derive a sense of continuity from one image to the next, drawing connections between the images even if they don’t really actually exist. Like how when we read a comic and interpolate the action between the panels even though that action isn’t being drawn frame by frame.

This challenge asks you to create a poem as a series of images. They can be compact images like the knock at the door or the tan line on the ring finger. They can be more complex sequences separated by stanzas like so:

She removes the band and rubs it between her fingers,

She palms the ring and fusses the bronzy scratched finish

There are bouquets on the counter and a knock at the door

The geraniums are in season

Bees dart between the stalky underbrush

The birdbath is still all dried up from the winter

Let the reader infer an action between the images, or let them search for a thematic connection. The nice thing is it forces the reader to do all the heavy lifting just by being vague!

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Poetry Challenge 17: Tell ‘Em We Landed Slanted

The problem with rhymed poems is that exact rhymes tend to start sounding stale after a while.

Been/Again, Go/Flow, Aunt/Grant and so on and the reader will eventually start filling in the end of the line before it comes because the poet is forced to lean on familiar phrases and awkward structures to complete the rhyme scheme.

This challenge asks you to write a rhyming poem that utilizes a majority of slant rhymes, or near-rhymes, rather than exact rhymes.

Been/Friend, Feed/Concrete, Goes/Float. The important part is the final vowel sound instead of the whole last syllable. Not only do they sound natural and subdued than a perfect rhyme scheme, but it also gives any given line a lot less predictable.

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Poetry Challenge 16: Unnaturally Alliterative

If you have access to a game of Scrabble, Quiddler, Scattergories, or some other board game with a way of generating at least semi-random letters, go ahead and grab it now. If not, use this one here. Get a random or semi-random letter and write it at the top of a page. Write down a long list of words that start with that letter, both exotic and mundane. Look for a collection of words you like together. Things that could be part of the same line or consecutive lines.

Roll the die, pick out a letter, draw a card, or press the enter key again to get another letter. Make a similar list and then do it again. Once you have a couple phrases you like, build a poem around those phrases. Subtlety is not the enemy here, and you can separate them out across lines and lines if you want, or build a path for getting from one phrase to the next.

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Poetry Challenge 15: Synaesthetic Blogging

Synaesthesia refers to the blending of senses, e.g. smelling a color or seeing a taste. Aesthetic refers to a set of principles that underpin an artistic movement or style. This challenge asks you to create a poem that blends sensory input along a specific aesthetic theme. For example, maybe tasting sounds in the wild west, hearing sights of urban decay, or blurring senses in the Pacific Northwest. Mix and match senses, but stick to a single area of aethetics if possible.

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Poetry Challenge 14: Take a Step Backwards

Write a poem where the action takes place in reverse. This can be either an event recounted with time moving backwards, or a change of status that would generally move in one direction (i.e. whole to broken, new to old) moving in the other (broken to whole, old to new).

For reference, see Ansel Elkins’ “Reverse: A Lynching”

Ideas for exploring: falling, shrinking, aging, learning, rising, speaking, loving.

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Poetry Challenge 13: A Novel Approach to Wordbanks

Pick up one of your favorite novels, or just anything off your shelf with a prose style you enjoy. Flip through the first third of the book and grab 5-10 words to form a mini word bank. Then flip through the middle third and grab another 5-10. Do the same with the last third.

Write a 3 stanza or 3 part poem where you use the first mini bank for the first stanza, the second for the second, and the third bank for the third.

For bonus points, reverse the order and combine with Challenge 14 (coming soon). For the record, my go-to novels for this exercise are Toni Morrison’s work.

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Poetry Challenge 12: Mixing Metaphors

This is something that might go against your basic instinct as a writer. Many beginner or even advanced writing classes will tell you unequivocally not to do this. But poetry is Bane and the rules are Batman and poetry gets to break the rules in half over his knee like a human Kit-Kat. Mixed metaphors can be unclear and can be worse at getting a single point across effectively. Luckily, poems are allowed to be nebulous and shrouded in ambiguity. Astute poetry readers expect this from poems and are willing to do the interpretive legwork required for a poet to juggle a few metaphors.

Today’s challenge is to write a poem that mixes as many metaphors as you can comfortably fit in one poem. The best way to do this without having them lose their impact is to introduce them cleanly as separate elements and then start blending them into a fugue at the end of the poem. Decentralize the narration and don’t get too bogged down fleshing out a plot.

Here’s how the scoring breaks down:

2+ metaphors - stick a gold star on your nose

3+ metaphors - you’re now allowed to pronounce the “h” in what

4+ metaphors - you are legally obligated to start believing in yourself

5+ metaphors - you’re a shiny golden god. Feel free to imagine yourself as Bane breaking the spine of practical creative writing conventions

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Poetry Challenge 11: The Opposite of the Last One

I don’t mean bad songs by Erasure, I mean do the opposite of an erasure. Take a smaller poem of yours (it’s okay to write a new one specifically for this exercise) and insert lines and stanzas between the words until a larger text forms around it. This text can explain the poem in more detail or act as a shell that hides the first poem’s meaning.

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Poetry Challenge 10: Does Anyone Else Remember That One Good Song by Erasure?

Erasure poems, or blackout poems, are often created by a poet finding a large bit of text, like a passage from a novel or a newspaper article, and then cutting out or crossing out words until a much smaller text emerges with a questionable authorial pedigree.

If, for instance, you use Moby Dick, how much can you call it your own work when it’s all coming out of Herman Melville’s pen?

So to avoid any questions of authorship, this prompt is going to use your own body of work. Find a short story, an essay, a large poem, or a collection of smaller poems you’ve written in the past. Preferably something from at least a while ago. Black out or cut out most of the words until you have a much smaller text with a different meaning than the larger text. For this one it’s fun to print it out and then use a sharpie.

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Poetry Challenge 9: Ships in the Night

Write a poem that centers around two figures. They never explicitly interact, but the poem’s structure should evoke a thematic link between them. Try alternating lines, couplets, or stanzas between the two characters.

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Poetry Challenge 8: Steal This Album

Take a lyric or a couple of lyrics from a song you like that always get stuck in your head. Then write a few lines that might follow naturally from there. Remove and/or replace the original lyric and see what you have. Is it a very short poem? Is it a jumping off point or a conclusion?

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Poetry Challenge #7: Caesura Hardball

Write a poem that is bisected by a fairly large open space in the center. But to make things difficult, make each side readable on its own. That means essentially there’s a left poem and a right poem that can be globbed together and read as one. That’s 3 poems, really, so give yourself extra points if you complete this challenge.

What kind of shapes can you make in the center? It could be jagged, or generally cone up or down, shift left or right as one half dominates the other, or you could center align for a perfect gap. I’m interested in what these submissions might look like, so maybe a .png or .jpeg rather than a text submission for this one. :)

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How to Eat Your Grandfather’s Dementia like Melting Ice Cream OR How to Fight Back OR Getting Lost Looking for Your Flight to Phoenix OR Arrival Boards Remind You of Your First Sexual Experience OR The Thing on the Other Side of the Hole in the Tree OR Euthanasia OR The Killing OR How to Get Your Garden to Stop Folding in on Itself OR Pulling All the Skeletons Out of the Fridge OR Into the Water OR Realigning Chakras by Mistake OR Burying All Your Stuffed Animals After an Open Casket Memorial OR Placing Three Children on an Old Shelf (after Bukowski, after Garfunkle, after Ian Bavitz, after my third grade teacher, after my sister, after my mother, after everything is over, after me) Just try to forgive yourself.

@self-containedadventures

Challenge #2: Electric Boogaloo...

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I Want to Know if You Can Sit with Pain, Mine or Your Own, Without Moving to Hide It (after Oriah Mountain Dreamer) I cannot sit with you because I cannot sit with pain. Instead I sit with a razorblade and Try not to carve your name Deep and ragged into my skin To try and explain to myself What you did. You know when a child is molested And the vacant therapist Points to the vacant doll and ask, “Point to where he touched you?” How do I point to nowhere and everywhere at the same time? Because when you called at 9am saying, “I need to talk” and I rush over even when I work at 5am and I got there But you had taken 6 shots So all you really wanted to do was fuck That is how it went. Because we both knew You didn’t have any friends but I always there And nightly I became the toy, the doll, the girl you fucked. When you were sad, and mad, and drunk, because Without the liquor you just couldn’t get it up. It didn’t matter how I felt when I was sober but you were drunk and I just wanted to melt into the floor you pinned me to with you body too large and mine to small to push you off. When you drank too much and I tried To help but when I couldn’t say the right things You screamed and yelled and punched the wall But you never hit me Because no one could know that late at night In your basement lit by grey tv light that when you were hitting the drywall it felt like my skin and finally killing me when done with your fit you pulled me in for a kiss. I can’t sit with pain but I also can’t sit at your grave. I know your hurting I know why you drink And took all those pills But why couldn’t you stop Trying to fill me with all your pain Because that won’t make it go away But then you just keep jamming and jamming and jamming it down my throat until I choke and can’t speak anymore You hug me close and say “You know you love me.” Your pain pinned me down and shut me up, Because as long as I was there No matter how lifeless or dead You wouldn’t kill yourself I became your therapist, sex toy, and mother All in a short month, With no choice, no voice On how to be me. 1,2,3,4,5,6 feet under the ground but I can’t help but wonder at the end of it all, was it you or me in that grave? Who finally couldn’t take it? Who couldn’t sit with your pain?

@ladymoriamort

Challenge #3: Getting Inspired Thanks for the awesome submission!

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Poetry Challenge #6: Steal from Dean Young, Like All Great Artists Should

This is one of Dean Young’s poems from his pretty hefty collection, Bender. It’s a great read and pretty economical, and you can buy it here.

But that’s beside the point. You might notice that every line in this poem is an end to a story. Write you own Beginner’s Guide to Endings, making sure to credit my boy Dean for the inspiration. Or write a Beginner’s Guide to Camp Counseling, or to Forgiving Your Brother, or to Anything™.

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poetryprompts

If you’re having trouble starting a poem, begin at the end. Take a single collection of poems and make a list of the last two words from each poem. Then write your own poem using only these words. Be vigilant at first utilizing just the vocabulary from the list. After a couple of drafts, stray from the limited words to help bring the poem to its full realization.

from here: http://www.pw.org/writing-prompts-exercises

poetrychallenges

This is a great idea!

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