Day 15: Fighting the Urge to Vomit

Today's prompt sits uncomfortably in my throat. One of my least favorite feelings in this world is this one. If I'm fighting back the urge to vomit, then something in my world is skewed. The dinner didn't set well. The presentation went horribly. Someone has passed on a virus that I now have to fight off. The news was too awful and too real. The baby apparently hates it when I eat broccoli now.

Generally speaking, there's a trigger for that urge to vomit. Today I challenge you to key into one of those triggers and describe that scenario that preludes fighting back the sick. It's not always a negative that makes us feel this way. Take it where you want it to go and tell us a story.

The suggested type of poem for this prompt is a narrative or storytelling poem. This poem has one main character, a beginning, middle, and an end. You can use devices like rhyme and repetition to tell the story (or not, it's entirely up to you). There's no set structure for modern narrative poems. Use your senses and help us to explore your story. You don't have to take a lot of time to set up the story, you can dive right in. And there's no definitive length for the narrative poem. It can be as long or as short as you want.

Happy writing!

Remember, our prompts are only suggestions, you can find your inspiration wherever your muse leads you. Please visit the other participants, share the hashtag, #OctPoWriMo, on social media, and share your link in the comments below. Let us know how this journey into poetry is going for you.  

Tamara Woods was raised (fairly happily) in West Virginia, where she began writing poetry at the age of 12. She published her first poetry collection, The Shaping of an “Angry” Black Woman in 2014 and is working on her first fiction novel due out in winter 2016. She is the Editor of The Reverie Journal, a poetry publication. She also moderates #writestuff a weekly writing Twitter chat. You can find her on Twitter here. She works as a full-time freelance writer and doesn’t post nearly enough her blog PenPaperPad. She creates videos about books and writing on her YouTube channel. She is a hillbilly hermit in Honolulu living with her Mathemagician.

Day 12: Imagination Stands in the Road

Our imagination is a powerful thing, it's what fuels us as children and hopefully continues to fuel us as adults. As I'm writing this, I have the Disney-Pixar movie "Inside Out" playing in the background. If you haven't seen it, it's a fun watch with some important life lessons that anyone can gather from it. 

One of the supporting characters is Bing Bong, the main character Riley's imaginary friend who she might have forgotten. He's mostly cotton candy, part cat, part elephant, and part dolphin as he describes himself. They went on adventures on their imaginary rocket, usually trips to the moon!

 Did you have an imaginary friend as a kid? Do you have one now? What about your kids if you have them? What are some adventures you went on? 

On a sadder note, when did you stop playing with your imaginary friend? What was the moment where you grew past that? 

​

For those prompt lovers that commented nice things about my prompts last time, I have another for you! You'll either love me or hate me for it. Let's go around the world to France, for a 39 line poem called the sestina

Today I challenge you to try your hand at a sestina. Back in college when I was getting my poetry degree, I had to write several of these and hated most of those minutes. However, once I found my beat, I really found it and that was a pretty awesome feeling. 

A sestina is 39 lines, 6 stanzas with 6 lines each plus a tag. 

First, start with 6 words of your choice. Make sure you like them because you'll be using them over and over again. Take those words and rotate them at the ends of your stanzas. They rotate in a round with the last word of the last line being the last word of the first line in the next stanza.  Your lines can be any length, though it just looks nicer if they're quite regular. 

Example of how that will look with the words imagine(A), joy(B), coffee(C), clouds(D), rocket(E), music(F)

Stanza 1
Line 1-imagine (A)
Line 2-joy (B)
Line 3-coffee (C)
Line 4-clouds (D)
Line 5-rocket (E)
Line 6-music (F)

Stanza 2
Line 7-music(F)
Line 8-Imagine(A)
Line 9-rocket(E)
Line 10-joy(B)
Line 11-clouds (D)
Line 12-coffee(C)

Stanza 3
Line 13-coffee(C)
Line 14-music (F)
Line 15-clouds (D)
Line 16-imagine (A)
Line 17-joy (B)
Line 18-rocket(E)

Stanza 4
Line 19-rocket (E)
Line 20-coffee (C)
Line 21-joy (B)
Line 22-music (F)
Line 23-imagine (A)
Line 24-clouds (D)

Stanza 5
Line 25-clouds (D)
Line 26-rocket (E)
Line 27-imagine (A)
Line 28-coffee (C)
Line 29-music (F)
Line 30-joy (B)

Stanza 6
Line 31-joy(B)
Line 32-clouds(D)
Line 33-music (F)
Line 34-rocket(E)
Line 35-coffee (C)
Line 36-imagine (A)

Stanza 7
Line 37-imagine(A), joy (B)
Line 38-coffee (C), clouds (D)
Line 39-rocket (E), music (F)

There is a modification for an envoi for Stanza 7 

Line 37- imagine (A), joy (B), coffee (C)

Line 38- clouds (D), rocket (E), music (F) 

1. ABCDEF
2. FAEBDC
3. CFDABE
4. ECBFAD
5. DEACFB
6. BDFECA
7. (envoi) ECA or ACE or AB, CD, EF 

Do you love or hate me now? 

For those that hate me, maybe I can redeem myself with more normal prompts: 

Imagine yourself on a mountain: 

Word prompts: 

Joy, clouds, music, rocket, coffee, imagine. 

Cheers and sunshine, 

-Beverly Tan

Day 3: Taste of Metal

Day 3! 

Beverly Tan here, your resident anarchist of form with today's prompt "The Taste of Metal" 

We're going to start today's tip with one of my latest favorite poetry forms. This year I started writing cheritas. Cheritas first caught my attention on the blog of one of my favorite indie poets Gabrial Gadfly. His introduction to the form included the fact that it was from Malaysia, being the Malay word for "story." Being of Malaysian-Chinese heritage myself and being a full time storyteller, I had to know more. 

The golden rule about a cherita is that it tells a story. 

What I really love about Cheritas is that it's a very loose form. Cheritas are a stanza based form rather than a syllable-based one. 

It's really simple: 

1 line stanza.

2 line stanza.

3 line stanza.

The lines can be any length you choose. 

Cheritas are also traditionally not titled. 

Now for the word prompts.

Metal. Fun fact:  upon research, I did find a cooking show called "Taste of Metal" where musicians from heavy metal bands cook.

Metals have been associated with everything from alchemy to astrology to chemistry to (the obvious one) geology. Without metal we wouldn't have much of what we call modern civilization. When was the last time you tasted metal? Your fork as you ate breakfast? A dental tool? The iron when you bit your tongue? Growing up with braces? What memories and emotions are attached to those moments? 

Word bank prompt: 

The taste of metal

Ice from the sky

The stars around her

A hollow ring

From the shadows

Under the moon

Visual prompt: 

Cheers & Sunshine, 
-Beverly 

How Do You Do That?

In just FOUR days, we will begin OctPoWriMo 2014! The team here will be posting daily prompts (completely optional, of course!) to help spark ideas. So what do you do once you read the daily prompt? Some of the questions I've been asked are: "How do you start a poem?" "How do you write a poem?" "Does it have to rhyme?" 

Wikihow has a simple approach that is similar to what I do when I write poetry. The article "write a free verse poem" gives four simple steps that can lead to an excellent free verse poem. Another guide that I found is "how to write a free verse poem". 

“No verse is free for the man who wants to do a good job.” T. S. Eliot

If you crave structure in your poems, we will often offer suggested forms to try. As always, you can attempt our suggestion, or you can branch out on your own. If you're not familiar with Shadow Poetry, it's an excellent resource that, when combined with Rhyme Zone, can help you generate any form of poetry you've ever heard of (and a few that perhaps you haven't!)

I'm getting excited about writing prompts and taking part in the daily poetry writing challenge right along with you! 

By the way, there's a worldwide poetry event taking place tomorrow (Saturday, September 27) sponsored by 100 Thousand Poets for Change. Check them out and take part in the event in your area! 

~Amy McGrath