1 in 12, A poetry Challenge for 2016
I want you to write one poem for 2016. Just one. But I want you to write it 12 times.
Here is the challenge, write a poem each month, the same poem. Don’t look at the previous ones, just tuck them away. Bring yourself back to the same moment, the same raw energy 12 times, 12 different moments over a year, and write.
What you’ll get at the end of the year is a small glimpse at yourself over the year. You’ll have one poem, but 12 sides to it.
How to start:
- Use the same first line for each poem
- Use the same title for each poem
- Use the same idea, but it has to be specific, so not “this is a poem about my mom” but rather, “this is a poem about that time my mom drove us to the park and I fell”
- Take a poem you have already written, and simply re-write it
All of these, each month, from memory. The purpose is two-fold: you will have poems at the end of the year to look at; the monthly influences will trickle in to your word choice and decisions: the happiness, anger, frustrations, the outside world and your inside thoughts, bringing a different glimpse to 2016.
It is telephone with yourself, but where you are hoping to have some variation from start to finish. Line lengths, word choices, even entire stanzas will come and go as the year does.
And to play with it. Have fun with it.