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Writing Prompts, Poetry Forms, News and Book Reviews
I am so excited to participate in The World of Poetry’s Fiesta tomorrow! It will be at 8am Central. Please join me if you can!
It will be recorded as usual. And—as usual—I forgot to post the recording. Here is the YouTube link to the last one I attended in November.
Have a great night! Hope to see you!
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving if you celebrate it—I am still stuffed.
I once again managed to sneak in with accomplished poets from around the world. Please join me tomorrow morning (8am Central). If you cannot make it—just too early, I completely understand—I will post a recording of the live event. I promise I won’t forget this time!
Btw, here is a link to the recording for the last reading I participated in since I forgot to post it: The World of Poetry reading 63. I hope you enjoy it!
Hi all, I am in such a weird headspace that weeks passed before I remembered that August is the Sealey Challenge. Usually I do not complete the challenge but do push myself to read more poetry books than usual.
While it may be too late to catch up to earn the prize, August is a great month to get reading recommendations for later and to promote your favorite books and poets on social media. Don’t forget to check out the Sealey Challenge website and check out the books of the challenger’s founder—Nicole Sealey. I loved ordinary beast and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Were Named. I haven’t read her latest, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure but plan to.
It is inspiring to know that so many great poets are out there writing and eager to share their favorite collections. Promoting your favorites is a great way to give back to the community. Here is a poet who always promotes and encourages others. To read more of his review, click here and check out Adrian’s own books and events on his site.
Have fun reading!
I am grateful to be invited to participate again! I hope you can you join me in the live reading, but if not I will post a link to the YouTube reading later.
As the program host and eminent poet Toufiq Zohar notes, the world of poetry is all under one sky.
Hope you can make it!
I was so grateful to be asked to join in the World of Poetry reading last week with such eminent poets! The program was televised in 42 countries, and I managed to sneak in. Check out the YouTube recording if you are interested.
Thanks!
Here is the link to the recording of the World of Poetry reading. I hope you enjoy it! Thanks!
I am so excited to be included. It will be televised live in the morning California time, but evening in Bangladesh. I will post the link for the recording tomorrow or the next day. I hope you will join. <3
I am happy to be included in the Anaheim Poetry Review anthology and will be at the launch Tuesday the 11th at 5pm.
Yes, another April is upon us. It is National Poetry Month, full of readings, celebration, and the challenge to write a poem every day for the month. Of course, you can cut off the last half of the month in your calendar, but technically you need to write thirty to win the cash prize (there is no prize except the reward of writing every day).
Check out the official site for this year’s prompts and those from previous years!
Other poets and writing organizations will also be providing prompts, so I will posting links to their websites and events. I will try to post extra prompts, but I will be writing or editing a poem every day (mostly editing since I need to finish my manuscript).
For preparation, here is a bonus prompt: take your favorite poem (or one of your favorites—I can never choose just one) and use for a ghostline its fifth line (or a line somewhere in the center, likely the heart of the poem, whatever line most resonates with you). Remember to erase and credit the poet.
Remember you do not need to write 30 GOOD poems, just 30 poems. That’s why May is the unofficial month of editing (or every month after until the next April). And, if you write one more poem than you usually do in a month or fewer poems but these are ones you are happier with, you have succeeded. I am revising (pun intended) the challenge to include editing older poems, many from previous 30/30s.
The true challenge is just to keep writing and having fun! Good luck!!!
It is so easy to get caught in our small circles with little exploration of writers in other countries. I certainly am guilty of that. One of the fascinating experiences of getting invited to participate in an international event with poets reading in multiple languages was recognizing the emotion behind a poem even if I did not understand the words. The music spoken carried across continents.
Here is a poem shared by Ilya Kaminsky, whom I admire deeply. I hope you enjoy the poem as much I do.
Good luck writing and reading today!
I am so excited to be included with such talented poets from all over the world!!! The reading will be live at 9pm Bangladesh time, and 7am Pacific, but there will be a recording for anyone wanting to sleep in.
Yes, I meant to have a prompt up on Tuesday, but this week has just slipped by me…
I am so excited to announce I have an event coming up! On Sunday I will be part of a televised international poetry reading. It will be 8am Pacific time on. Here is the link to attend: https://www.facebook.com/UddanTV
I have attended two previous World of Poetry readings but am bad at promoting my events and wanted to make sure I did for this one. I misunderstood Toufiq for the first event—I believed he was inviting me to listen until he asked me for a bio and an author photo. Somehow I managed to sneak in despite the fact that the other poets are all acclaimed writers and respected scholars.
I am so happy to have been invited back. The other poets are truly amazing, and I am grateful to be included. I hope you can attend or watch the recording.
Hi all, I completely forgot about NaNoWriMo this year. Every November writers are challenged to write 50,000 words of a novel in any genre, and the NaNoWriMo organization provides events and platform to build a community and offer support.
Here is the faq to get you started.
I won’t be participating this year: I am focusing on poetry. I have managed the challenge in the past, and I’ll happily cheer you on.
Remember even if you are behind, you can try to catch up or just finish late. The goal is to create a daily writing habit and not let your internal editor stifle you. Good luck!
Image Courtesy of NaNoWri: Viking helm above a crest divided into quadrants (image of coffee cup in upper left, laptop in upper right, stack of pages in lower right, and crossed pens in lower left)
I have been struggling to keep up with reading. My stack of unread books far outpaces my stack of read. I hope this August I can rekindle my reading habits. Just as with the last couple of years of not completing the 30/30 writing challenge but writing more poems than usual, I know that simply trying to participate will encourage me to read more poetry.
For more information on the challenge and how to connect with other readers and get great book recommendations, check out the website.
I hope you can join me, but if not, no worries. We are all in this together!
Tomorrow another April arrives and with it the 30 poems in 30 days writing challenge. I will try to post a prompt every week (sorry for the slacking), but there are many places to find prompts. Check out the official NaPoWriMo site for daily prompts and past years’ prompts. There’s even an early bird prompt posted today.
Hi everybody! Just wanted to invite you to hear me Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, Angela Narciso Torres, Jesenia Chávez and me at Gatsby Books (5535 E Spring St, Long Beach)! Come listen to Adrian read from his most recent book and from his other collections. I am excited to hear him, Jesenia, and Angela!
I hope to see you!
April is the cruelest month—it’s National Poetry Month and the write-30-poems-in-30-days challenge! For every day of this month, write a poem. Be on the look out for great readings, workshops and other events too.
For more prompts and information, check out the NaPoWriMo site. The first prompt is already up!
Join me in writing (I hope) 30 poems this month. I will post extra prompts (not daily though—because I will barely make it through this month), but I provide links to other prompt sources.
Be a poetry-writing fool. Get started!
Check out Moon Tide Press’s Indiegogo fundraiser for its upcoming anthology Sh!t Men Say to Me: A Poetry Anthology in Response to Toxic Masculinity for workshops, a one-on-one photo session, manuscript consultation, a mixtape, mystery bags, and more! Or just preorder it and enjoy!
You can purchase other great Moon Tide poetry collections here.
Sorry for the hiatus, my iPad was out of commission and then my discipline was… I will post another Halloween-themed prompt tomorrow, but I wanted to discuss NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month challenge) because it starts this Friday.
The NaNoWriMo challenge is writing 50,000 words of a novel in one month. Recently, the challenge has been expanded to include collections of poems, short stories, memoirs and other genres. Technically, the project is supposed to be a new novel or all new stories/poems/writing, but of course just getting people to write is the point. I have tried twice and once completed the challenge a few years ago. I decided to do it again this year because I need to shift from poetry to fiction for a while.
One of the things I really enjoyed about NaNoWriMo was the community support. The NaNoWriMo site offers tips, tools, online writing buddies, and group writing events. For more information about the challenge and to sign up, go to organization’s website nanowrimo.org
Join me in the all-night slogs and, I hope, the eventual celebration.. Let me know if you plan to register at the NaNoWriMo site, so that we can be buddies.
Let the Dark Ink anthology reading tattoo your soul!
