MONDAY PROMPT / November 1

This week’s prompt

Not too long ago we pilfered a line or two for our Big Tent prompt. How about this week we share one of our own lines, one that our community can use with wild abandon?

This is how a collaborative prompt of this nature works: Leave your line in the comments below and do it as soon as you can (so folks have time to look over the offerings and find something that suits their muse this week). Yes, you can leave more than one line. But leave them as individual comments, okay?

Then use one of someone else’s offered lines in your own original poem.

Come back, starting Friday, and share your poem and identify the line you used, and the poet’s name! Sometimes it is nice to let the poem flow without bolding or italicizing the gifted line, to point it out in your process notes after the body of the poem. Sometimes it is nice to show the line off graphically. Choose the manner that is best for your poem this week and enjoy our community of poets!

How prompts work under the Big Tent

We post prompts on Mondays, and you have all week to write your poems, based on our fabulous prompt or any other inspiration. Come back on Friday when you will find a “Come One, Come All” post where you can use the comments section to 1) leave a link to your poem or 2) leave the poem in its entirety.

You’ll have all day Friday (and all weekend!) to post your work and read each others’ work. Take your time. Enjoy all the poems that are new to the world.

Some hints

Hint: We’ve set Big Tent Poetry to Central Time.

Hint: An easy way to check on new post comments is with RSS reader, if you use one. Here’s the address: https://bigtentpoetry.org/comments/feed.

Hint: If you are new to our site, or put more than one link in your comment,  your comment(s) will be held for moderation for your first few posts. We’re checking the filters often, so don’t despair! That said, if it takes more than a half a day to see it come live on the site, do email us at info (at) bigtentpoetry.org. (But be patient, okay?)

Circus etiquette

We figure you know how to play in the poetry community, but here are the basics:

Be nice. Have fun. Remember we aren’t a critique forum. We want to support each other as we bring more poetry into our lives. Only provide critique if someone specifically asks for it.

Although we love seeing our badge in the sidebar of your blog, we would appreciate it if you would also link back to the site in each of your poem posts. Linking within your post helps people travel back and forth from your site to the Big Tent Poetry site, and it helps perpetuate Big Tent Poetry “findability” in Google searches — and that helps us all.