Celebrating National Poetry Month — Part 1
Poemorama
Paper Poetry’s panorama of poetry prompts
Poetic poemorama a rainbow of unfettered emotion a kaleidoscope of lived-in experience a sunrise of hope on the horizon
Poemorama! It’s time to celebrate poetry!
April is National Poetry Month in the US, and has been every April since 1996 when the Academy of American Poets made the proclamation that poetry — and poets — deserve special recognition.
National Poetry Month is an American-based commemoration but poetry, as we can attest here in Medium, is a literary genre not bound by borders of land, culture, creed or language. Poetry deserves to be lauded and celebrated around the globe. And that’s exactly what we at Paper Poetry intend to do!
We’re taking a panoramic perspective and making National Poetry Month a global event for all of us. A 30-day, month-long festival to marvel at, be inspired by, and fall in love with all things poetic. A chance to partake and nourish our souls in a wondrous poemorama of poetry.
Poemorama
When: Friday April 1 — Saturday April 30, 2022
Where: here at Paper Poetry
Who: everyone is invited to participate
What: 30 poetry prompts to be issued in three parts with 10 prompts each, and announced on the following dates — Part 1 — Friday April 1 — see below for prompt details Part 2 — Sunday April 10 Part 3 — Wednesday April 20
How: this is a cumulative event — all prompts will be open from the time of their release until the last day of the event. In other words, submissions will be accepted for Part 1 prompts for the full 30-day timeline while submissions for Part 2 prompts will be open from April 10–30, and Part 3 prompts from April 20–30.
Poets are invited to respond to any number of prompts as many times as they like during the month of April. There are no limits on the number of submissions from each poet.
Details for All Prompt Submissions
Tags: please use Poemorama as one of the tags, plus a tag that relates to the specific prompt you are responding to
Kicker: please use Poemorama at Paper Poetry as the kicker for each submission (see here for instructions on how to format a kicker)
Title/subtitle: your choice but should relate to the specific prompt in some way
Image: one image only Please note: your image must incorporate a handwritten/handcrafted element in either paper or digital format in accordance with Paper Poetry’s submission guidelines.
Promotional link: please add a link to the Poemorama prompt announcement that relates to your submission e.g. if responding to a prompt from Part 1, then link this announcement to your story.
Handle tags: feel free to @ handle tag up to five other poets into your story, bearing in mind that some writers could be tagged multiple times and may not appreciate so much attention i.e. please use your discretion.
Shoutouts: feel free to promote up to three other poets’ Poemorama submissions, including one of your own.
Poetry is a life-cherishing force, for poems are not words after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry Mary Oliver, adapted from A Poetry Handbook
Poemorama Poetry Prompts — Part 1
Here we are! The first ten prompts for our global celebration of National Poetry Month 2022! Come and join us build a panorama of poetry taking in the wonderful diversity and international flavors of poetry.
The first ten prompts have us digging down into the grassroots of what makes poetry identifiable and distinct from other genres. We’re workshopping form and structure — poetry that conforms to a specific syllable count or style.
With literally hundreds to choose from we’ve narrowed the selection down to a sample of five syllabic forms and five stylistic forms. A brief description of each one follows along with linked references for further explanation and instruction.
Prompt 1: Haiku, senryu, sciku, monoku — 17 syllables
It wouldn’t be a celebration of poetry without what is arguably one of the most popular and well-known forms of micropoetry used today.
Haiku, senryu, and sciku are unrhymed, three-line verses constructed with 17 syllables and a syllable/line structure of five, seven, five.
Traditional Japanese haiku is about nature while senryu is about human emotions and behaviour. Sciku, a portmanteau of science and haiku, is about all things related to science and mathematics.
Monoku is a single line of poetic verse with minimal punctuation including no initial capital letter. Convention states that a monoku can be less than 17 syllables, but we request that Poemorama writers comply with the 17-syllable standard.
Tags: Haiku ~ Senryu ~ Sciku ~ Monoku
Prompt 2: American Cinquain — 22 syllables
The American Cinquain, also known as the Adelaide Crapsey Cinquain in honour of the poet who devised the form, is a five-line verse with a strict syllabic structure and stress pattern — 2 (1), 4 (2), 6 (3), 8 (4), 2 (1). The numbers in brackets indicate the number of stressed syllables per line.
Typically an American Cinquain is written in iambic meter i.e. every second syllable is stressed, da-DUM.
Tag: American Cinquain
Prompt 3: Naani — 20–25 syllables
A naani is a four-line micropoem constructed with 20–25 syllables. It was introduced by Dr N Gopi, the much-admired Indian Telugu poet.
While there are no rules regarding line structure, rhyme, meter or theme, the poet uses the naani to make a statement about the subject at hand.
Tag: Naani
Prompt 4: Nonet — 45 syllables
The nonet has no fixed address in that little, if anything, is known about its origin. Nevertheless, it is gaining popularity, including here in Medium.
The nonet is a nine-line single stanza poem that follows a simple syllabic formula: starting with a nine-syllable line, each subsequent line has one less syllable than the preceding line. The last line is one syllable. Rhyme, meter, theme and purpose are at the poet’s discretion.
Tag: Nonet
Prompt 5: Sonnet — 140 syllables
Well, we couldn’t not include sonnets! Originally from Italy, the sonnet made its way to England and to Shakespeare’s door in the 16th century. Western poets have been in love with it ever since.
At the risk of oversimplifying it, a sonnet consists of 14 lines, each of ten syllables worked in iambic pentameter i.e. da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, along with an end rhyme scheme.
Sonnets explore an issue or a problem of some sort. Towards the end of the poem, there’s a volta, a turn, where the tone of the poem changes and a solution or a conclusion is made.
Italian (Petrarchan) sonnets and English (Elizabethan or Shakespearean) sonnets are the most common forms. The difference is primarily in the rhyme scheme and composition.
The Italian sonnet has two stanzas. The first is eight lines with an abababab end rhyme scheme and the second is six lines with either cdecde or cdcdcd rhyme scheme.
The English sonnet has four stanzas. The first three stanzas each have four lines of alternating rhyme i.e. abab-cdcd-efef. The last stanza is a couplet, a pair of rhyming lines i.e. gg.
Tag: Sonnet
Prompt 6: Free Verse
Without a doubt, free verse would have to be the most common form of poetry found here in Medium. It’s the Anglicized version of the French vers libre popularized in the nineteenth century.
As the name implies, free verse is an anything-goes style of poetry whereby the poet has complete control over every aspect of the poem’s construction and layout.
Tag: Free Verse
Prompt 7: Acrostic
Hugely popular in schools and often, but unfairly, given a bad rap for not being real poetry, acrostic poems can be as poetic as any other form of poetry. It’s all about the application of poetic principles and that, in turn, is a reflection of the poet’s skills.
Most people think of acrostic poems as using the first letter of each line to spell out the subject of the poem be it a name, a phrase, a message, but in true secret code style, the letters can be embedded anywhere in the line. What’s important is that the letters are in the correct descending order to accurately spell the name, phrase, or message.
We’re not into espionage, nor do we have hours and hours to decode text to uncover hidden messages in poems, so we ask that poets submitting an acrostic poem to please bold the relevant letters in your poem.
Tag: Acrostic
Prompt 8: Prose Poem
Prose poetry is also called hybrid poetry and for good reason. Essentially, it is a creative form of prose that contains elements and literary devices such as cadence, meter, rhyme, assonance, alliteration, and metaphor, that is more often associated with poetry.
Prose poetry is like a free verse in that there are no rules, apart from the layout being more consistent with prose than poetry.
Tag: Prose Poem
Prompt 9: Golden Shovel
Golden shovel poetry is a relatively recent addition to the catalogue of poetic forms. Developed by American poet, Terrance Hayes, it first appeared in his 2010 poetry collection, Lighthead.
Golden shovel is a creative form of tribute poetry whereby it takes each word from one or more lines of a well-known poem and uses it as the end word in each line of a completely new poem. Of course, credit is given to the source poem that gave rise to the new poem.
Tag: Golden Shovel
Prompt 10: Twittle
I expect anyone who knows me and is reading this will be saying, “I knew twittle would have to be here somewhere!”
For those of you yet to know what a twittle is, it’s a four-line micro poem with exactly 100 alphabet letters and a touch of rhyme. The four-line verse at the beginning of this post is a twittle.
Tag: Twittle
Themes
There are no set themes for Poemorama Part 1 prompts — poets are welcome to submit poetry about anything and everything.
Paper Poetry’s editors reserve the right to decline submissions deemed in contravention of Medium’s editorial and safety standards.
Character Counter
Counting syllables and, in the case of twittles, counting letters, can become rather tedious.
There are a number of online apps that take most of the pain away. I say most because I’ve discovered that digital syllable counters are far from perfect. In fact, I haven’t come across one that hasn’t stuffed it up. The most reliable one I have found is Character Counter Tool, but even that has hiccups from time to time.
Rest assured, human backup i.e. your friendly Paper Poetry editors, are here to double-check your syllabic creations.
A Note from Paper Poetry’s Editors
Please be advised that for the month of April as we host the Poemorama event, we will not be running a Poetry Series or a Sparked Ink Writer promotion. For the month of April, Poemorama will replace our usual weekly prompts.
Regular, non-Poemorama submissions will be accepted, as usual, however, our homepage will be devoted primarily to showcasing Poemorama content.
New Writers
New writers are most welcome to participate in the Poemorama event. In the comments below, please request to be added as a writer and include your Medium @ handle; or email us at [email protected]
Newsletter
To make sure you receive announcements about our special events and weekly poetry prompts, we encourage you to subscribe to our newsletter, Paper Poetry Sparks. Please find the sign-up form at the end of this post.
Come on! Let’s do the Poemorama!
