MONDAY PROMPT(s) / April 18

This week’s prompt(s)

It is the middle of April, National Poetry Month — some of you are still writing-a-poem-a-day,  some of you aren’t. Here is your weekly allotment of cotton candy (inspiration) and peanuts (prompts):

1. Write a poem about escape.
2. Write a poem that uses a pearl of wisdom or wives tale as its title.
3. Write a poem about what you would shout down the street.
4. Write a poem in which you have to repeat yourself.
5. Write a poem about lighting a candle.
6. Write a poem for something or someone you have harmed.
7. Write a poem about a predicament.

If you want to stick to the normal plan, simply pick one prompt and write a poem. If you are doing a poem-a-day, here they are: seven prompts. Either way, come back starting Friday and through the weekend to post your poems! If you’ve written one, as usual, post that one. If you’ve written more than one, give us your favorite!

Special notes for April

Some people will be writing a poem-a-day in April in celebration of National Poetry Month, and some people won’t. Whatever you intend to do, we will be right here on our regular Monday-prompt / Friday-poems schedule. If you want to write a poem-a-day using Big Tent prompts, our weekly prompts from March 28 through April 25 will include seven choices. Write to them, one each day, if you like. But if you prefer to ignore all the poem-a-day madness and just want to keep doing what you’re doing, simply pick one from the list and go with it!

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, your comment(s) will be held for moderation for your first few posts. If you put more than one link in your comment, your comment(s) will be held for moderation. 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.

Tags: national poetry month (april 2011), poetry, prompts