2025 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 13
For the 2025 November PAD Chapbook Challenge, poets write a poem a day in the month of November. Day 13 is to write a dialogue poem.
I don't always give a peek under the hood of how I run these daily poetry challenges, but here's a quick glimpse: I create all the prompts before the month starts and sometimes make little tweaks here or there during the month as makes sense. But I wait until the month starts to get poeming and usually don't let myself look ahead at the future prompts. I share this, because my poem for yesterday would've really worked for today's prompt. Oh well.
For today’s prompt, write a dialogue poem. The poem could include dialogue between two (or more) characters. Or it could be "in dialogue" with another poem, whether yours or that of another person (in some challenges, I've called these response poems).
By the way, here's a poem I wrote (and published in DMQ Review) using dialogue I overheard from several different people around me at an airport terminal titled "Eavesdropping."
Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them. If you have a wild idea, follow it.
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Writer's Digest is celebrating our 20th Annual Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards with new categories and prizes. We’re looking for your best poems of 32 lines or fewer or un-published chapbooks 25 pages or fewer. Any form of poetry is eligible including epic, free verse, odes, pantoums, sonnets, villanelles, and even haiku. This is the only Writer’s Digest competition exclusively for poets. Win cash and an article about you in the July/August issue of Writer’s Digest.
(Note: This is completely separate of the November PAD Chapbook Challenge.)
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Here’s my attempt at a Dialogue Poem:
“Avoidance”
"Tell me something," she says, "Why
don't you write more poems I
can star in?" And I find I
don't have a good answer I
would like to share, so then, I
stall by looking at the sky
and, realizing it's absurd,
hear myself say the word, "Hi."
(Note on today's poem: I wrote a rather forced Welsh poetic form today, specifically the cyrch a chwta, because I find writing poetic forms helps when I'm not sure what to write.)
