My flowerpots, pre-squirrels March's challenge was to write a pantoum featuring an animal.  Mine is a modern pantoum, which repeats lines in the right order but doesn't use rhyme like a traditional pantoum would.  Usually, I love playing with rhyme (even making up words) but I kind of liked attempting this without rhyme this month---it forced me to focus on images and verbs instead of word play.   A pantoum is not complicated but it does have strict rules. If you're intimidated, or feeling stuck, you can do as some of us did, and use this lovely exercis ..read more

The challenge this month was to write a poem in the form of a love letter, taking a cue from Valentine's Day, I suppose.  I don't have anything against V-Day, but somehow, February brings out a stubborn streak in me.  In 2010, and again in 2020, I wrote a semi-tirade to this month, chastening it for its behavior.  And (maybe because it's a leap year again) I'm returning to my old friend this year, too.  Here's a record of our correspondence:  (2010) Oh, February, oh February  You make my heart sing, you do, were it not for blinding blizzards…and the swine ..read more

It was an easy choice to kick off 2024 with an ekphrastic challenge. Writing about or in conversation with a piece of art automatically gives a poet several places to begin: What do you first notice? What lingers with you after you look away? Is there more to the story, things beneath the surface that you're curious about? What questions would you ask the art or the artist if you could?   All these ideas (and more) were on my mind as I engaged with the work of Roberto Benavidez, who describes himself as "sculptor specializing in the piñata form." Benavidez came to my attention t ..read more

One of my favorite small things:  French green lentils November's challenge is one of the most fun:  an invitation to write in the style of a well-known poet.  It's a chance to learn by imitation, and an opportunity to delve into the choices each poet makes when they create. This time it's Valerie Worth, who's best known for close observation, spare lines, attention to the "small things" (either in size or in importance) and an affinity for a child's viewpoint.  One of my favorite quotes about her work comes from Valerie herself:  “It has always seemed to me ..read more

Quotes fill the walls at Planet Word, Washington, DC  (highly recommended)  This month's challenge is another game, or as Mary Lee puts it, "a word puzzle."  Bouts-Rimés is an old game, played by poets since the early 17th century.  The name means "rhymed ends" and the game is played by giving a poet a list of rhymed end words, and challenging her to write a poem to fit.  Supposedly, the harder the end words, the better the game.  We weren't too cruel to ourselves, but the list did have a few doozies:  A: profuse/abtruse/chartreuse/truce B: i ..read more

Dead or not? Mystery photo taken  November, 2016 August's challenge was a fun one. As a group, we played a version of the "Exquisite Corpse" game, where one poet passes a set of two lines to the next poet, who adds her own two, and then sends only the new ones on to the next person, and so on, until everyone has added (in secret) two lines to the whole poem. The big reveal of ALL the lines was during our Sunday ZOOM session. And there was a twist: each of us added one original line and one "clunker" taken from Linda Mitchell's clunker exchange and comments here.  Wow. At fi ..read more

Of course we stopped at the "world's smallest Bigfoot store" because that's what you do on vacation. The July challenge is the monotetra.  If you parse that name, you'll see it means something like "single-four" because each stanza has a repeated mono-rhyme scheme---yes, every single line rhymes with each other!-- and four "feet" per line.  (A foot has two syllables, so this means eight syllables for each line.) You can write as many stanzas as you like, and (thankfully) vary the singular rhyme between stanzas, but each stanza is only four lines, and each ends with f ..read more

Fairy rock, Iceland   In February, we're still exploring our 2023 theme of transformation in all its forms: conversion, alteration, metamorphosis,  mutation, growth, evolution, revision, modulation, change..  (I'm going to repeat this list every month, for my own benefit, so I know how wide the possibilities are.)  We're also repeating a challenge we've done several times (and one I love):  ekphrastic poetry---which is a fancy way of saying poetry that responds to art.  This challenge can be done anytime, anywhere a piece of art (painting, sculptur ..read more

At Planet Word's photo booth,  acting out the definitions of SAT words Last month, I had to take a break due to travel, but for this month's challenge, I'm definito-ly here.          Oooh, that joke was... Awful: Not filled with awe, but the opposite,   things that drain you of delight, on the scale  of bad to worse, it's nearly dreadful--     a dire expression of shared pain:  awwwww, noooooo... that's--- awful.             ---Sara Lewis Holmes (all rights reser ..read more

Quilt by Chawne Kimber* from the Renwick Gallery's new exhibit "This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World" July's challenge was to compose a phrase acrostic, taken from Maya Angelou's iconic poem, Still I Rise.  If you haven't read it, do that now. And perhaps her amazing bio, too. Only then will you appreciate the audacity of creating a new poem from hers. We spent half our ZOOM time talking about that!  But in the end, you'll see that each of us came up with a plan to tackle the challenge---Liz chose to repeat one phrase three times, Tanita took a stab at using o ..read more