Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Follow us to Ring #2 where we will attempt, for the very first time under this big tent, the death-defying, awe-inspiring poetry gong!
The assignment
For our inaugural poetry gong, we will write a poem-a-day for seven days on the idea “new to you.”
Find a poet you have never read or a poet you haven’t read recently and let a poem or a line that’s “new to you” inspire your writing. You may want to buy a new book. You may want to exchange some of your old books for a used one at a local shop. You may want to go to your own shelves and admit it’s been ages since you pulled down the books you’ve collected. We bet many of them will seem “new to you.”
You will do this each day for seven days: read something “new to you” and write a poem. Starting tomorrow, you will post the poems to your blogs and link back here at the posts labeled Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc. (Please don’t post poems or links to this post. Tomorrow is Day 1. You will post your first poem then.)
At the end of the seven days, you will have seven brand new drafts.
What is a poetry gong?
A gong is any practice that is repeated daily for many days, so a poetry gong is a multi-day writing challenge. Our first one here is seven days, but they can be any length. The goal is to write one poem each day as part of a community of writers. The idea is that fellow writers provide the encouragement and accountability we sometimes need to shake up our writing practice.
We write these poems in the same spirit in which we write to our weekly prompts — knowing that they are early drafts, grateful to have our creative juices stirred, pleased to have companionship along the way.
Carolee and Jill started poetry gongs when Read Write Poem was active, and the gongs were among the site’s most popular features. We love the gongs so much, we designated a ring in our circus for them from the very beginning. We are thrilled they are underway.
Use the comments section here to let us know if you have any questions. In the meantime, start writing! But don’t post your Day #1 poems yet. We’ll ask for those tomorrow.
