Month-Long Poetry Prompt
The Makeover
Fizz-crackle let your poetry dreams ignite
Another notch in the circuitry the fattening of time December fades into the sunset fizz-crackle as dreams ignite
there’s spirit still in spent tea-leaves whosoever cedes butterfly wings bestow grace upon our tongues and pay homage to the muse
Welcome to 2023!
Thank you for joining us here at Paper Poetry as we herald in a brand-new year. Another year of the unknown. Another year to make our own. Another year for our poetry to flow.
And flow it did in 2022!
Paper Poetry’s archives are filled with the wonderful words of our talented poets, each one bringing with them their own unique blend of specialness. And none more special than the poems that were received for the ‘ber’ month-long prompts — September Verses , ‘O’ is for October, Poember November , and wrapping up the year, Decidedly December.
You can find the September — November poetry collections in this tab on Paper Poetry’s homepage. They will soon be joined by the collection of poems from Indubala Kachhawa’s Decidedly December prompt.
Let’s take a look at the December collection now, and in doing so let’s show our appreciation and support for the poets who contributed their time and creativity to the prompt:
🎆 Charlotte Ella King — Bumpy Whee! 🎆 Dr. Fatima Imam — Awe-Inspiring 🎆 Gloria D. Gonsalves — The Namesake 🔹 December Spirit 🎆 Jenine "Jeni" Bsharah Baines — Upon a Fence Beribboned, A Hummingbird 🎆 William J Spirdione — Those Bright Lights on December’s Dark Days 🎆 Megan Nicole Morgan — Snow 🎆 Selma — Old Fashioned Memories Cherished Forever 🔹 A Kwansaba Poem To End The Year Praising Your Family 🎆 Thalia Dunn — Stories and Stars of December 🎆 Shereen Bingham — Do You Feel It? Warm Wishes for Joy and Peace in December Come From the Heart 🎆 James G Brennan — Hijacked 🎆 Carolyn Hastings — Christmas is Blooming 🔹 Distinctly, Decidedly December 🔹 Post-Christmas Brain Fuzz
Many thanks and much gratitude to all. 🙏 💖
A New Year, A New Prompt
January is the time for New Year’s resolutions, reviewing personal goals, making plans for the year ahead with a focus on self-improvement, accomplishment, and turning dreams into realities.
It’s the perfect time for a makeover!
A poetry makeover! ✨
We all have poems tucked away in notebooks, buried in drafts, scratched out on random bits of paper — poems that were never finished, missed the deadline, lost their oomph, became a disappointment.
There are others that we had published but on second thoughts do ponder, That word is wrong — I missed a beat — I know now how to fix it.
Welcome to Paper Poetry’s The Makeover!
For the month of January, Paper Poetry invites poets to overhaul one (or more) of their poems and give it a new lease on life. 😃
Now’s the time to make it shine arrange the words so they sit better add some rhyme, move a line at Paper Poetry’s ‘The Makeover’!
Prompt Outline
👉 Choose one of your own poems (published or unpublished) that you wish to rework in some way. For instance: it could be a micropoem that you want to develop into something more substantial; or a poem you weren’t happy with for whatever reason but you’re determined to get it right.
👉 Rework your chosen poem and present it as a before-after story i.e. include your original (before) poem as well as the makeover (after) poem. Please note: for purposes of comparison, the reworked poem will need to retain some features of the original poem. As a minimum, reworked poems will need to have more than a few words changed or rearranged.
👉 As an optional extra, feel free to share your process with us For example: what it was about the original poem you wanted to change, how you went about making the changes, and what lessons (if any) you learned along the way.
👉 For previously published poems, include a link to the original post here on Medium or elsewhere. Please note: your makeover story is a new story — please do not overwrite your original story.
Submission details
Title/subtitle/kicker: please use ‘The Makeover’ as the kicker; your choice of title and subtitle
Tags: please use ‘The Makeover’ tag when submitting your story
Image: minimum one image; maximum two images Please note: one of the images must incorporate a handwritten/handcrafted element in either paper or digital format in accordance with Paper Poetry’s submission guidelines. For example: handwritten segments of your before and after poems, a decorative title, an illustration that depicts an aspect of your poem, a digitally modified free-to-use image or personal photo that relates to your poem.
Extensions: Please include a promotional link to this prompt and invite (handle tag) up to five other writers to join the prompt.
Submission period: Sunday, January 1 (UTC-10hrs, Cook Islands 12:00am) — Tuesday, January 31 (UTC-10hrs, Cook Islands 11:59 pm)
Submission limits: poets are welcome to submit as many stories as they like to the prompt — each story constitutes one original (before) poem and its makeover (after) poem.
We welcome new writers to join the prompt. Please leave a comment requesting to be added as a writer and include your Medium @ handle; or email us at [email protected]
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Let your poetry dreams ignite — bring poetry to life,
