How to Write a Poem Every Day
Register for the Basic Version of this class – $10 (no community features)
I have come to believe that writing a poem every day is easy. I would like to help you get there too.
The true challenge, of course, is writing a good poem. I can’t promise that what you’ll write in this course will be any good (in fact, I encourage you to temporarily let go of the idea of “good” while you take it). But in order to revise, you first need a draft. I think it’s better to err on the side of writing too many poems than too few. You can always take a break from writing anything new if you feel you have too much, but you can never get lost writing time back.
This online course will cover a variety of compositional strategies that you can turn to whenever you aren’t sure what to write about. You’ll get 21 writing prompts (usually a new prompt, but in one case a chance to revisit a previous prompt with what you’ve learned) that will help you write a poem, often in an hour or less. If you do one each day, the course will take three weeks.
For the Basic version, there is no set time when the course takes place: you can complete the prompts on your own whenever your schedule allows. The Intensive version is currently offered on a periodic basis, and gives you the opportunity to take the course as part of a group. Both versions give you access to the materials indefinitely (for the life of this website).
Sometimes writing prompts can be very specific, meaning that poems created from them will inevitably be very similar. Not in this course: each prompt will be a technique you can use over and over to create an infinite number of infinitely varied poems. Unless you have an experimental bent, not all prompts may seem equally viable to you, but they will help you find phrases and lines that you’re unlikely to have created otherwise.
As with any voluntary challenge, you’ll be able to set your own terms, but the invitation is to write a new poem each day. If the pace sounds daunting, keep in mind that you can turn it into “how to write a poem every week.”
Are you up for it? What might it mean for you to have 21 new poems? Or to know that, even if you feel uninspired, you can sit down for a little while and come up with a poem? An imperfect poem, but a poem.
Let us suppose that everyone in the world wakes up today and tries to write a poem. It is impossible to know what will happen next but certainly we may be assured that the world will not be made worse. I believe in the divinity of profligacy. The creation of art, okay, just the attempt at the creation of art, as well as the appreciation of it, is both an enlarging of the world and an expanding of consciousness. To write a poem is to explore the unknown capacities of the mind and the heart; it is emotive, empathetic exercise and, like being struck by lightning, it will probably leave you stunned, singed, but also a bit brighter, and too your odds of being struck again then go much higher.
-from The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction by Dean Young
Comments from Past Participants
“I can hardly express how much I’ve enjoyed and benefited from these three weeks. Every day has been a challenge and a joyful experience of discovering all these new relationships with words! You have been so thorough in explanations and links and examples and every lesson was met with so much anticipation…There are so many directions I can take with each and every lesson and combinations thereof, that I will not want for inspiration. So many lessons had so many options that I will be revisiting these pages for a long time to come.”
– Melinda K. Hall
[In response to the question, what would you say if a friend told you they were going to take this course?] Go for it
– Katharine B
Register for the Basic Version of this class – $10. This version is self-led and continuously open – sign up at any time and go at your own pace.
Intensive Version – $130. [Currently closed to registration.] In this version, the class is offered during a specific time period (see below for current dates), and you’ll take it as part of a group. It includes:
- Access to a private forum where you can post what you write (if you choose), or discuss poetic process with others.
- A weekly Zoom meeting where you can ask questions and interact with others in real time.
- Detailed private critiques from the instructor of two poems (each critique will be a minimum of 500 words), sent privately to your email.
Intensive Version Dates: Next cohort not yet scheduled – leave your email below for updates and to let me know there’s interest.
Where: Online
Instructor: Meg Hartmann