2014 April PAD Challenge: Day 9
Before we get into today’s prompt, I just want to address a few common questions I’ve been asked recently: Who can join the challenge? Anyone (any age, any level of…
Before we get into today's prompt, I just want to address a few common questions I've been asked recently: Who can join the challenge? Anyone (any age, any level of experience, any location, and so on). When can they jump in? Anytime (like if you haven't participated in the first 8 days, you can get poeming today). Is it all right to bend (or even break) the prompt? Heck yeah. The prompt is just a springboard; you decide where, when, and how to jump. So let's get jumping!
For today's prompt, write a shelter poem. Shelter might be a structure like a house, apartment, or hotel. Shelter could be a tent or cardboard box. Shelter could be an umbrella, overpass, cave, or car. Shelter could be a state of mind, part of a money laundering scheme, or any number of interpretations.
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Workshop Your Poetry!
Break out of a rut or jump start your revision process with the Advanced Poetry Course offered by Writer's Digest University. This course involves workshopping poetry with an instructor and other poets of varying levels.
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Here's my attempt at a Shelter Poem:
"among the ruins"
the houses are crumbling
and the barns slant their way
to earth in the city
factories are silent
no metal on metal
or middle managers
barking at their workers
for the faults of machines
ohio is a knife
abandoned to weather
fighting against the rust
that turns us all to dust
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Today's guest judge is...
Kelli Russell Agodon
Kelli is a poet, writer, and editor from the Northwest. She’s the author of the newly released, Hourglass Museum (White Pine Press, 2014) and The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice, which she coauthored with Martha Silano. Her other books include Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, Small Knots, Geography, and Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry, which she edited with Annette Spaulding-Convy. Kelli is the co-founder of Two Sylvias Press and was the editor of Crab Creek Review for the last six years. She lives in a small seaside town where she is an avid mountain biker, paddleboarder, and hiker. She loves dessert, museums, and typewriters.
Learn more about her at her website: www.agodon.com. She also blogs at Book of Kells: www.ofkells.blogspot.com. She can be found on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/agodon.
Her press, Two Sylvias Press, recently launched a Kickstarter Campaign for The Poet Tarot: A Deck & Guidebook into Creative Exploration, which you can learn about and support here: http://bit.ly/PoetTarotKickstarter.
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Poem Your Heart Out
Poems, Prompts & Room to Add Your Own for the 2014 April PAD Challenge!
Words Dance Publishing is offering 20% off pre-orders for the Poem Your Heart Out anthology until May 1st! If you’d like to learn a bit more about our vision for the book, when it will be published, among other details.
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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of Solving the World’s Problems. He spent one summer working in the same car factory as his single mother, who put food on the table for three boys and still made it to nearly all their extracurricular activities. Learn more about him here: http://www.robertleebrewer.com/.
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Feel free to use Poetic Asides as your poetry shelter:
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
