The Jake of All Trades

Monday Poems, A Poetry Challenge for 2016

Ok, another poetry challenge for you. This one is simple. Every Monday, go to a blank sheet in your notebook (or how ever you write) and write out one poem about something that happened the week before.

Don’t edit, or second guess. Spend 5 or so minutes thinking about all the things that happened the previous week, then another 5 or so crafting something.

Close your notebook, and go about your day.

Can you go back, edit? do what you want! These are yours! The challenge is that first step, that first draft. You’ll have 52 of them at the end of the year. That’s a book. Even if only half are good, that’s 26 poems you didn’t have.

Not a fan of Monday? Doesn’t work? Make them Tuesday Poems, Sunday Morning poems, Thursday while I wait for my laundry to be done poems. Just stick with the day. For this exercise, it is the schedule that is the lesson.

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.

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