The A and I Poetry challenge is jointly hosted by Amanda and Ineke and is open to everyone, from complete beginners to advanced writers or aspiring poets.
The challenge runs March to October 2018. Each month we will share tips, offer a monthly poetry prompt and post link backs to your published Poetry posts.
Please scroll down to see this month’s poetry writing tips and April’s entrant links.
I am co-hosting this challenge with Amanda from https://forestwoodfolkart.wordpress.com/ – we met here on WordPress.
If you wish to read the story of how we met click here.
A and I Poetry Challenge Guidelines
- For General instructions on joining in click the Poetry Challenge Page.
- Everyone is very welcome to enter and age is no barrier.
- Write any kind of poem that you like, (the below prompt for this month, is merely a suggestion); it can be fun or serious.
- Write in any language that pleases you, and note that it certainly doesn’t have to be in English. As this is a joint challenge I, from Scrapydo2, will also post the challenge in Afrikaans on my blog, so if that language suits you better, visit her
- Add the A an I Poetry badge if you so wish. (optional)
- Publish the poem on your blog before the 27th day of that month adding the tag A and I Poetry Challenge to your post.
- Once you publish your blog post, please leave a comment here on this page and also at Amanda’s blog listing the URL link to YOUR poem. [Others can then find their way to your post and we build a supportive community of poets who visit, read and comment on other’s poetry.
**If you don’t post the link to our blogs with your poetry, it is really hard for us to find you and include a link back to your blog, for the next month’s challenge.
Poetry Challenge – May Prompt
*Write a poem using this photograph or one of your own as inspiration.
N.B. If you choose to use your own photo, please post the photo along with the poem.
Poetry Challenge Entrants for April:
Poetry Tips
- Formatting – Tools to help you format your poems on your blog, including how to add extra lines in your post without WordPress expunging them on posting, can be found here
- Live your poem. When you write, imagine you are a participant in your poem. Look around. See what’s happening. Feel the texture of the sticky pine cone. Feel how difficult it is to pull your fingers apart to type afterwards. Listen to the sounds around you. A robin? A whippoorwill? A Tasmanian devil? Smell your panic. Taste the dryness on your tongue, the thin salt. Activate all your senses. Galway Kinnell once said, “If you’re going to write about a frog, become that frog. Inhabit frogness.”
- Don’t think too much, just write it down.
Ray Bradbury once said, “Throw yourself off a cliff and build your wings on the way down.” Don’t think too much about what I’m going to write. Let the poem create itself. Discover what you are doing in the process of doing it. It evolves as you put pen to paper.
- Incorporate poetry devices
What else can make your poetry shine like the summer sun? Imagery, metaphors, and the symbolism-to name just a few poetry devices-are subtle ways to improve your poetry. By adding rhyme, irony, or tone to your work, you create a phoenix from a dead piece of paper.
Readers enjoy poetry with meaning, that has a beat or an easy flow, and can be secretive but not beyond their understanding. Great poets know exactly how to incorporate the many elements of poetry into their work.
Research the many poetry devices (others include simile, figurative language, synecdoche, allegories, and musical devices) and begin practising with them in your own poetry. Write a poem with a theme you enjoy but base it on irony or a metaphor. Continue to practice each device and work them all into different poems to experience each one’s effect.
You can find many examples and ways to use poetry devices by reading books on the subject or doing a simple search online. Study and learn each device, because you never know when one might work perfectly for what you are trying to write. And by diversifying your abilities, you make yourself a much better writer.
In a nutshell:
- Use poetry devices to give your work substance.
- Readers enjoy reading poetry with inner meaning or special attributes.
- It takes practice, hard work, and dedication to master devices like Symbolism, Imagery, or Rhyme.
- Finding out about each poetry device is easy; just search online or at your local bookstore or library.
I can’t wait to read what you come up with this month.
Don’t forget to link back to this post, on your poetry submission post, and leave a link and comment here so Amanda, Ineke and others can find your post.
Have fun!
`Ineke and Amanda
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