July 28th: Write a poem that features multiple unexpected turns, leaps, or voltas.

July 21st: Write journalistic poem that explores the sensory details of where you live.

July 14th: Write a traditional ghazal that references at least one other poet. When submitting, please include the name of the poets referenced in the submission note.

July 7th: Write a poem set on a specific road or path.

June 30th: Write an elegy for something that was in your home.

June 23rd: Write an extended metaphor poem that features a celestial body.

June 16th: Write a poem set in a place you’ve always dreamed of going to but never have. Allude to all the basic senses.

June 2nd: Write an ode to something that doesn’t conform to typical ode topics and begins with an epigraph.

May 26th: Write a poem using a regular meter of some kind that references your ancestral home.

May 19th: Find a partner and write a collaborative poem in some kind of form.

May 12th: Pull a random card from a deck and write a poem about it.

May 5th: Write a golden prose poem: one that includes the words from your favorite haiku but goes in a different direction.

April 28th: Write an ekphrastic poem about your favorite painting.

April 21st: Write a poem to share on social media about what poetry means to you.

April 16th: Write a poem with a single word as the title, in which our understanding of that word shifts by the end of the poem.

April 9th: Write a poem that uses internal rhyme in every line.

April 1st: Write a poem set in spring that includes personification.

March 25th: Write a poem from the perspective of one of your childhood toys.

March 18th: Write a short poem that explores someone else’s awe.

March 11th: Write a “golden” sestina or tritina: start with an epigraph from another poem, and use six (or three) words from that quote as the end-words of your sestina or tritina.

March 4th: Write a “What to Do if …” poem about what to do in an unusual situation.

February 26th: Revise a poem that you wrote a long time ago by radically shifting its perspective.

February 19th: Write a haiku sequence that talks about love without mentioning it by name.

February 12th: Write a song of someone or something, as a persona poem 32 lines long.

February 5th: Write a poem entitled, “A Brief History of [X],” where X is a word that needs to be translated, and the poem is less than a page.

January 29th: Write a poem that tells a story about a silent interaction with a stranger.

January 22nd: Write a villanelle that opens with an epigraph.

January 15th: Write a poem that focuses on a color and a scent.

January 8th: Write a poem that uses extended metaphor to describe a period of your life, and use a rhyme scheme of some kind.

January 1st: Look at an old family photograph, and find an object in the background that you hadn’t noticed before. Write a poem about it.

December 26th: Write a poem that includes multiple lists.

December 18th: Move through an unnatural environment and describe it as though you were writing a nature poem.

December 11th: Write a poem that begins with an idiomatic expression that you take literally or incorrectly, and see where it goes.

December 4th: Write a poem about a childhood pain, and use a refrain.

November 27th: Write and epistolary poem (i.e., a letter) to someone you are thankful for.

November 20th: Write a “how-to” poem about something you don’t know how to do.

November 13th: Write a sonnet with the title “The End of _____ Is Not _____” after Jamaica Baldwin’s American sonnet, “The End of Sorrow Is Not Happiness.”

November 6th: Write a poem that features a shadow.

October 30th: Write a poem about one of your fears.

October 23rd: Write a poem about a museum for an abstract concept, using one of the forms Maryann read: ghazal, villanelle, call and response, or alliterative. Title it “The Museum of ______.”

October 16th: Write an assay—a poem that breaks down an idea or topic into it’s constituent parts.

October 9th: Write a poem set in the first place you ever worked.

October 2nd: Pick an inanimate object and trace the evolution of your relationship with it throughout your life. Title it with the name of that object.

September 25th: Write a haibun that mentions time.

September 18th: Write a poem that refers to another poem and starts immediately after the events in that poem.

September 11th: Write a one sentence poem that includes two truths and a lie.

August 28th: Write a sonnet with a number in it.

August 21st: Pick a single word at random from the dictionary and use that as the title of a poem in which someone gets their hands dirty.

August 14th: Write a villanelle that includes a cryptid (mythological figure, such as the Loch Ness Monster).

August 14th: Write a villanelle that includes a cryptid (mythological figure, such as the Loch Ness Monster).

August 7th: Write a poem that’s a letter to your favorite poet. Include a suggestion.

July 31st: Write a poem in which something is cooked.