Poetry Slam

The Form of the Irish With the world's eyes on Ireland and #repealthe8th lately, it seemed timely to explore an Irish poerty form for this month's slam. Of course, when you're working with a poetic form not originally intended for English, the syllable and...

I'm still skipping sonnets But it's spring here in the Pacific Northwest, and I've been reminded that it's time to explore another classic form: the ode. Odes were once so numerous that their name became a synonym for "poem." And who hasn't heard an...

In honor of YeahWrite's seventh birthday this month, our poetry slam's focused on sevens too: the seven lines of a rime royal. Or rhyme royal. Rhyme royale. Look, spelling wasn't standardized yet when this form was developed. In fact, it's a form so old...

This month's poetry slam is for the spellers out there. We've rhymed this year, we've scanned, but have we used spellcheck? We have not. So let's start. (Fun fact: I once tried to talk my parents into moving because our home state didn't participate in the...

I know it's February but... Blah blah Valentine's Day blah love blah sweetest poetry form blah. I'm already feeling nauseated. Hey, gang, what do you say we give the traditional sonnets a break this year, and try something else for February? As a nod to...

I can’t believe it’s back-to-school time already. Whether you’re in school yourself or just providing taxi services to small schoolbound humans, you probably just lost a certain amount of free time in your schedule. That’s ok. This month’s poetry slam has...

I want do-overs! Whether you call it a mulligan, a retraction, or a palinode, it's human to err and even more human to want to correct that error. This month for our Poetry Slam at YeahWrite we'll explore the palinode - the poet's version of white-out - with a twist....

Let's take a mid-season break! Where I'm sitting, it's almost midsummer. Editor Asha, in Australia, is watching midwinter approach. But no matter where in the world you are, it's a season of song. Some of us are singing around beach bonfires, others are caroling or...

All right, poets, it's your turn. April was National Poetry Month, so this month instead of a slam we're going to talk about how to read and critique all that work you generated for your #poemaday before you unleash it on an unsuspecting Internet. Or, if you've been...

Big changes are in the air for yeah write. That's why I want to get back to the basics this month. The basics of poetry, that is. It's been almost two years since we first delved into blank verse for a poetry slam, and while I'd like to pretend all the new folks go...

Now that everyone's familiar with the couplet, let's take February's post to the next level. For this month's poetry slam we'll be taking everything we learned about writing in tight spaces and applying it to the four-line memoriam stanza. Before I dive in, y'all, I'm...

It's not the size that matters... It's whether you start your post with a semi-appropriate joke. Actually, what I did just there is what you'll be doing this month: wrote a couplet. Although we usually think of couplets as building blocks for longer poems, they can be...

It's the little things that matter, as we wind down to the end of the year. Tiny lights on evergreen trees. Tiny candles in their rows. The tiny terminal 'e' that differentiates between a ballad and a ballade. That's right, we're more or less obsessed with endings...