April is National Poetry Month, and you know what that means!
Actually, no, you don’t, because honestly we are not well-organized adults all the time and for at least the past few years we’ve dropped the ball on doing something cool for National Poetry Month. Well not this year, suckers! This year we have the coolest National Poetry Month idea ever: just write some poems.
That’s right: this month’s slam is a free-for-all. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a poem in whatever form you enjoy and post it to the fiction|poetry grid. If you’re participating in something like a poem-a-day challenge, we’ll waive our usual “just our grid” linkup rules so that you don’t have to try to write two poems, as long as the other challenge isn’t a clicking competition or for profit.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I straight up panic when I’m handed a prompt this broad. “Just write” freaks me out a lot more than “write a sonnet containing these six words, in order.” So to get you started I’m going to pile on a ton of links and ideas for you to use as prompts if you want, plus some of our editors’ favorite poetry. If you like a poem you read, try writing one in that style!
Our Favorites
These are some of our favorite poems. We’ve included links to the ones we could find online – just click the title. There are probably others that we’ve forgotten, or haven’t read yet. If you, personally, don’t have a favorite poem (or three), consider signing up for something like the Poem of the Day list from the Poetry Foundation. You’re sure to run across a new favorite poem or author.
Everybody probably knows by now that I’m a sucker for love poetry. But here’s the thing. I feel like all poetry is love poetry, in one way or another. Poems are passion made manifest via language, and passion implies a deep caring for someone or something. That being said, my favorite poems really are straight-up love poems. I first read Labysheedy (The Silken Bed) by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill over twenty years ago, and it has stuck with me all this time. I love the lush language (even in translation) and the unabashed sexiness of the imagery. It’s not a new metaphor (nature and love/sex), but by writing in Gaelic and using elements that are specific to Irish landscapes, the poet equates romantic/physical love with her love of the land itself. Whichever passion resonates for you, this poem gets the blood racing a little faster.
When I read poetry, I tend to read with a sort of literary bokeh– the whole of the poem will be unfocused, a set of overlaid images and feelings. The poems that stick with me are the ones with lines that stand out in sharp focus against these blurs. “They want to know the map that got me lost” is a line like that. The specificity of its yearning-toward-home, the sense that home is nowhere, these are things that speak in the way the poem speaks, the rhythms that sound out loud even when you only read them with your eyes (but do read this one aloud if you get the chance).
I don’t have children, and I will probably never be a parent, but this poem contains an inventory of all of the constant worries I would have if I were a father. Even when I read it in my twenties, I completely related to it. I love how conversational it is and the mixture of humor and shock at the idea of being shot at and having a potted plant nearly kill you. Over the years, I come back to it again and again to remember what I love about poetry.
This poem about refugees (coming to Australia) contrasts the casualness of life for most citizens with the violence and ruthlessness of life for refugees. It uses easy, everyday, accessible language and imagery initially–settling the reader into comfort–before pulling them starkly into violence. The contrast forces the reader to consider, not only their comfortable perspective as an Australian citizen, but also why people might flee a country, might seek refuge elsewhere, and what that refuge country looks like to them.
Reneé Petitt-Schipp is a Western Australian poet who lived in the Indian Ocean Territories for around three years. Her continued work with refugees informs her poetry. I was at her reading of this poem in 2018, and its impact has stayed with me.
The constantly shifting point of view in Open and Closed Spaces forces you to reconsider each line as you read the next. This change, this reimagining of each image, lets a brief poem feel massive as the spaces it describes. It’s likely that I connect to this poem in such a visceral way because even though Transtromer is Swedish the images could just as easily describe the rural mountains I grew up in, the gloves my father worked in. But it’s possible I just like the idea of a future slanting upward like a kite.
Two Ruined Boats by Mark Doty
Mark Doty wrote the book Atlantis while caring for his partner, who was dying of HIV/AIDS. The sadness and inevitability of the narration are haunting given the state of mind Doty was in when he wrote it, but the rich descriptions of color and texture add hope and beauty to a miserable time. In the poem, he writes “Description is in itself a kind of travel.” Yes. Reading this poem made me realize what a powerful tool description is when it is handled correctly.
Love reading poetry but not sure how to write it? Check out our Writing Help Section. Scan back – we’ve shared a poetry form a month with our community for the past few years, so there’s plenty of inspiration to be found as well as nifty tutorials.
You can also check out lists of poetic forms like this one from the Academy of American Poets or this one from Writers’ Digest. In most cases, the list will describe the rules for the poetic form, give at least one example, and maybe link to a tutorial post. Caveat: this is not for the faint of heart. The examples given often don’t follow the rules well, or the rules aren’t clearly explained. But if you’re confident in your ability to analyze poetry and compare it to brief formal descriptions, it’s a great way to find forms you didn’t know existed.
Besides writing poetry, the thing that sends most of us into a panic during National Poetry Month is critiquing it. What do you do when you see the “feedback wanted” badge on a poem? Not to worry: we’ve got a whole tutorial on how to read and offer valuable feedback on poetry even if you don’t consider yourself a poet. So this is your fair warning: you’re not off the hook for useful, meaningful feedback just cause you saw a poem on the grid. OK? OK. Let’s get writing!
