This week’s prompt
What’s in a Name?
We all (well, many of us) have a manuscript in the works. If not a full-blown 60-pages-of-perfect-poetry, then at least a vague idea of how you might like a collection of your work to look. One thing you may or may not have considered is the title. What title best summarizes your work? Is it the title of a specific poem? A theme found in your work? Something completely and totally random?
This week, contemplate your canon (not your navel). Come up with 10 potential titles for your newest/5th/yet-to-be-written manuscript. Then, from those 10 titles, choose one and write the poem for that title. Yup. A little reverse psychology. Write the title, then write the title poem.
Don’t have a book in you just yet? No problem! Try coming up with some interesting titles for individual poems. Still stuck? “How to _____________” is always a good place to start. Try stealing a title from a magazine or newspaper article and write a poem totally unrelated to the article.
Come back Friday (and the weekend) and let us know how that worked for you!
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.