Big congratulations to each poet in our anthology The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America's Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders, on its selection for a 2026 American Legacy Book Award in the Poetry Anthology category; and congratulations to my brilliant co-editors Aileen Cassinetto and David Hassler - a dream of an editorial team!

Happy spring, I hope things are blooming where you are!

As I do every year, I post a whole month of writing prompts for April NaPoMo.

I may have been a bit behind on other posts, but I'll never forget to post prompts for your enjoyment and inspiration. 
HAPPY WRITING, everyone!

I will post a week's worth at a time, so please check back often.

01 - 07 APRIL

*  Think of some kind of opening or turn (in the weather, in the season, in circumstance, in a story you've heard), and write of the moment of transition that signalled the turn. You don't have to explain what came before, but you can say what you're looking forward to.

* What type of hibernating animal are you? Write a poem in which you identify with one and show how or in what way you vibe with it. 

* Write a love poem in which you don't ever use the word love, but instead rely on imagery and description to show it.

* Write a letter-poem to someone or something, even if you know there might not be any hope of a response.

* Think of a material or object that has "you" written all over it. Write a poem titled "Self Portrait as ___ (this thing)."

* We often/tend to think in binaries, in either-or relationships: yes, no; early, late; up, down; now, never. Write a poem in which you praise the in-between and show its embodiment in some experience.

* What are some seeds that you would keep today, for a future use? Be specific. Write more extensively into one/some of these. 

08 - 14 April

​- This past week, the students in my Honors Intro to Literature class read Italo Calvino's "The Distance of the Moon"— a story which has mesmerized me since I myself first encountered it in college. The world in it is almost as familiar as our own, but for the fact that it behaves in certain magical ways...  You say the moon is made of cheese? you see a bunny or a man in the moon? Whether or not you read Calvino's story, write/draft a poem in which you reimagine an object or aspect of the "real" and "science-backed" experience of the world. What does thinking of it in this curious, whimsical, and imaginative way, do to change anything in the way you think of it or of the world?

- Have you recently overheard an interesting line or sentence, a bit of conversation, in a public space? Use that to jump-start a poem.

- I had a follow-up visit recently with my primary care doctor, to report that I finally got to see a hand doctor for a trigger thumb problem that's been plaguing me for nearly 2 months. Did you get a shot? asked the PA. Yes, I replied. Did you watch? he asked. As a matter of fact I did. Write/draft a poem about "watching" or looking at something that might be considered hard to do. Write about why you don't turn away.

- The Artemis II mission to the moon has been all over the news in the last few days. Have you ever had the desire to name something you own or use after a figure from mythology? My husband jokes that he once wanted to name a work computer license server "Poetic," so then it would become a Poetic License server, haha. Do you give names to your laptop, your iPad, your vacuum cleaner? (Ours has been christened "Spock.") Write a poem about this, and about your choice of name.

- Use juxtaposition—placing two unlike things side by side—to discover something new about a familiar, ordinary, or seemingly commonplace subject or experience.  For instance - a movie date, going to church (or not going to church), forgetting where you parked, your childhood room, your name, sweating in summer, taking pictures on vacation (Wendell Berry has a wonderful poem about the latter, called  "The Vacation"). 

Pair the ordinary or more familiar thing with something that isn't "naturally" associated with it. This is the stuff that makes for powerful metaphors.
​
Some example pairs:
 
your hallway light switch + the darkness before creation
your dining room + a battlefield
a family recipe + a map of migration
your lungs + a forest
a paper cut + a guillotine
childrens' toys + landmines
one afternoon + an era
family gatherings + the signing of treaties

-  How many times a day are you asked to verify your identity by clicking on all the squares with a bicycle, traffic lights, fire hydrants or cars through CAPTCHA squares? (Did you know the acronym stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart?)  Write a poem about something a bot could never replicate of you.

- Divination comes from the Latin divinatio, meaning to predict what is hidden or obscure (including the future) by magical means. Pick a card from a Tarot or oracle deck if you have one, or pick one from an online source like this. But rather than trying to foresee the future or some outcome, use the figures and the arrangement portrayed on the card as a visual prompt. What does it remind you of? Write it out as a poem.

15 - 21 April

- Think of a word whose meaning changes with the addition or deletion of just one letter.
For instance, laughter and slaughter; grain and rain; mother and other; mother and smother. Write a poem in which you get to use both of these words, and show how you get from one to the other.

- What myth or fairy tale has stuck with you through the years? Think of why you identify with it, or with a figure or an object in that narrative. Write from the point of view of that figure or object, but in a poem that is set in the present moment.

- Like John Yau in "Ill-Advised Love Poem," riff off of a familiar line from traditional romantic poetry (he uses “Come live with me and be my love” from Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”)

- Like Carrie Fountain in "Will You?", use a line often encountered in a pop culture context (in her poem, it’s “Will You Be My Valentine?” and the practice of [ even very young, pre-pubescent! ] children exchanging valentines in school)

-  Like Louise Gluck in "Anniversary," play with the idea of the many kinds of things that become part of our archive of knowledge about another person, from being in intimate relationship with them

- Like Matthew Olzmann in "Kummerspeck," look for an interesting compound word either in English or a different language. He uses “kummerspeck” (Ger.), whose literal meaning is “grief bacon.” Use it,  and any other word associations that radiate from the word, to write a poem about the difficulty of communicating something to someone who means much to you but with whom you have a complicated relationship

- Start a poem from a memory or a moment/mood of talking to yourself (or even talking aloud to yourself). Let the poem "happen" without too consciously directing its flow (in the generation of it). See what kinds of lines you wind up with, and see what they look like during ongoing revision.

22 - 30 April

- Imagine if your life had footnotes. Choose a moment from a time in your life; or choose a claim or idea you hold about yourself (i.e. I am the most fearless person in my family). Write a short prose paragraph "main text" version of it. Then, write a poem that works as a FOOTNOTES version - a digression, memory, contradiction, complication, or secret attached to it.  

- Robert Frost wrote "Fire and Ice" in the 1920's - his vision of apocalypse. The Book of Revelation gives writes of plagues and ecological destruction, and an escalation of seals and trumpets: cacophony and cataclysm. In Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Nine Billion Names of God," the stars just quietly and without fanfare go out one by one. In her poem, Franny Choi writes about apocalypse  as something that has been happening through the centuries. Write a poem about this same subject, from the point of view of the ordinary and banal. You can decide on the tone your poem will take (funny? sardonic? zen?).

- Stories, as Sheherazade shows us, can be a means of waging resistance, can be a form of survival. Do you have a Sheherazade story? When and how did a story save you or reveal a truth? Write a poem about this.

- What is an image that can function as touchstone for you? I mean,  thinking of that one vivid image seems to call forth a strong train of associations that leads you from one idea/experience/memory to the next. Write a poem in which you use an image in this way. Name and show it in your poem.

- A jar of Nutella was shown floating inside the spaceship in one of the Artemis II crew's footages that we got to see. What food item would you take with you if you went into space?

- Salty, savory, bitter, or sweet? Write a poem about what you prefer.

​- My parents had an age gap of exactly twenty years.  I don't think I've ever really thought about them and what it must have taken to work on a relationship that was of course colored (even if not wholly or only) by that. Write a poem about something you haven't queried closely, in regard to someone(s) close to you.

​- We're told that we shouldn't make any big decisions when we're tired, angry, or hungry. What poem might you write in any one of those states? What decision outcome might that situation lead to? Imagine.

- Write a poem about singing your favorite karaoke song.

                                                                                     BONUS PROMPT!!!

I just taught a 4-session workshop on "Writing About Love Without Using the Word Love," and this was my last freewrite for my class:

- Work only with the word LOVE and change it - find another word in which “love” is embedded.
But you can use more than just one letter to make the change.

Here are a few I came up with, for starters--

lover
beloved
lovely
lovey-dovey
lovebug
lovestruck
glove
clove
clover
plover
louvre
slovenly

Now, lean in, and wiithout stopping to think too hard about revision just yet— try to use all of them in a prose poem (or any other form of poem) and follow the direction that will seem to emerge from your writing.