2023 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 1
It’s time for the 2023 November Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge. It’s free and anyone can jump in, play, and poem along (guidelines here). The goal is to write a poem each day in November and then assemble a chapbook!
For today’s prompt, write a declaration poem. A declaration is a statement or announcement; it can also be a list of things that are subject to a tax or duty. For your poem, you could write a statement or announcement, make a list, and/or use only declarative sentences. Plus, I’m good with any other interpretation works for you.
Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.
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Write a poem every single day of the year with Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming. After sharing more than a thousand prompts and prompting thousands of poems for more than a decade, Brewer picked 365 of his favorite poetry prompts here.
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Here’s my attempt at a Declaration Poem:
“one, two, three, four”
I declare a poem war,
a war fought with poems
written on paper or screens
or in the revolving chamber of the mind.
We could use our thumbs,
though mostly to push the space bar
in our battle of line breaks
and formalities.
This planet is burning
and melting and flooding
over with information and em dashes
leading to nothing and nowhere.
I hold this truth
in my closed fist and feel
it burn into my flesh with the
intensity of a war, of a poem, of a wish
for the world to write away its wars,
to reduce them to ash.