Author Archive

This week’s prompt

This week I’m going to borrow a writing exercise from my creative non-fiction teacher. I think it will lend itself to my purposes (drill for old material in a new way) quite well. After all, what doesn’t serve poetry?

Set yourself down at a quiet writing table with blank paper and a couple of pens or pencils. Set a timer for 30 minutes and draw your home. I don’t mean design your home, or become a drafts person and render it accurately, but I do mean try to identify all the rooms in your house in a graphic manner. On paper: walls, stairs, sinks, doors, furniture. No one is going to see this drawing but you, so don’t worry about how well you craft it. Just draw your home for 30 minutes.

Now (as in immediately after you have finished your drawing) free-write for 20-30 minutes about something this drawing brought to your attention. It may or may not have anything to do with your house. Just go with whatever comes to mind and write down at least a page of that stream of consciousness flow.

Next step (which doesn’t have to immediately follow): write yourself a poem using something from your free-write.

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: Since we’re a new site, and you’re new to it, 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.

This week’s prompt

How about  a little pilfering this week?

The idea is to borrow* one line from a poet’s poem and use that line as a springboard. The borrowed line may not end up in your poem at all, much less be the first line. But it will be the one that gets you going.

To make it easy on your poem hunting, why not look at the Verse Daily archives and read a handful of poems until you find a compelling line. Or go to your own home library or stroll your local bookstore poetry aisle and pluck a line. Or go to your favorite online journal (like qarrtsiluni) and browse their archives.

Come back starting Friday and leave us a link to your poem, and do tell us something** about the poet and the poem with the line you borrowed, either in the comments here or in your post.

* Borrowing is not plagiarizing: We want you to use no more than one (or two) line(s) and we want you to give proper credit to the poet and the poem the line comes from. Proper credit includes noting the poet’s name, poem’s name, and where it was found, i.e. “a plane had been lost” from Maxine Chernoff’s poem “” published by Parthenon West Review and reprinted in Verse Daily.

** A link would be nice so your readers can get to the inspiring poem if indeed you found it online. Part of the hidden prompt is to read other people’s works and share those finds with our poetry community. Sneaky, aren’t we? It’s all for the good of poetry.

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: Since we’re a new site, and you’re new to it, 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.

This week’s prompt

This week’s prompt comes from one of the West’s most esteemed poets, William Stafford:
“Think of something you said. Now write what you wish you had said.”

Once you’ve pared it down to one idea and a resultant poem, come back starting Friday and leave us a link to your rewritten history.

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: Since we’re a new site, and you’re new to it, 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.