Blog
-
Contradiction Prompt
Begin a poem with a phrase that contains a contradiction, something like:
- Let me say it again: I never repeat myself.
- Deep down, you are really shallow.
- My brother is jealous of me because I am an only child.
- I don’t like any fish at all, but I like tuna and flounder.
Or, begin with an oxymoron, like:
- historical present
- seriously funny
- working vacation
- alone together
Once you have a contradictory statement or oxymoron that feels like a fruitful beginning for a poem, build on it by adding a narrative with plenty of concrete, sensory details.
In the process, be sure to move your narrative back and forth through time (past, present, future).
Conclude your poem with a declarative statement that states a fact, opinion, observation, or explanation using plain language.
Poem for Inspiration:
“What is Lost is Not Lost” by Peter Mladinic from Zingara Poetry Review, March 2021
-
Utterance Prompt
Using Anaphora (phrase repeated at the beginning of successive clauses or lines), write a poem that also works as a speech act, that is, an utterance that performs an action, such as a request, promise or apology, rather than simply conveying information.
For a great example see “Ambidextrous” by Denise Low, Zingara Poetry Review
-
Humor in Public Spaces
Write about a time, maybe recently, when an encounter with a stranger in a public space provided or resulted in humor, maybe a joke was told or one of you made an observational quip, apt pun, or there was a “pie-in-the-face” moment of physical comedy.
Poems for Inspiration:
“Permanence” by Denise Duhamel
“Dance in a Drugstore” by Anne Whitehouse
-
Transformation Prompt
Make a list things in life that you find ugly, shameful, or repulsive–things like foot odor, rudeness, cockroaches, road kill, belching in public, etc.
Choose one or more items from your list to include in a poem.
For an extra challenge, see if you can transform something usually deemed ugly into something desirable, beautiful, and worthy of admiration.
Poems for inspiration:
“The Ugliest Girl in Christendom Goes to the Gynecologist” by Camille-Yvette Welsch
“Ugliness came up” by Kitty Jospé
“City of Bread” by Marc Janssen
-
Absences Unfolded
Freewrite about absence, absenteeism, or absent things.
Start with real, ordinary absences, both abstract and concrete, then progressively larger absences, each growing in size and scope, even to the point of hyperbole, until you find an absence that feels larger than all other absences, larger than the world, larger than the universe.
Poems for Inspiration:
“What We Leave Behind” by Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb
“Song of Sorrow” by Jeremy Garnett
“My Sister’s Baby Blanket” by Alejandro Lucero
“Absencece by Inference” by Duane L. Herrmann
-
Whispers of Work: A Lament for Extinct Professions
Write a poem about a profession which does not exist anymore or which is phasing out.
If you like, you can aim for an ode, a lament, a diatribe, a docu-poem, narrative poem, or found poem with your chosen profession as the central image, setting, or source.
Examples of extinct professions:
- ice cutter
- elevator operator
- milkman
- lamplighter
- switchboard operator
Examples of professions phasing away:
- farmer
- travel agent
- mason
- tailor
- literary translator
Professions at serious risk:
- teacher
- librarian
- journalist
- writer
For Inspiration:
“Barnwork We Didn’t Talk Much About” by Charles A. Swanson, Zingara Poetry Review
“Stay at Home Mom” by Sabina M. Säfsten, Zingara Poetry Review
“Fugitives” by Stephen Mead, Zingara Poetry Review
“The Milkman” by Isabella Gardner, Poetry Foundation
“London’s Summer Morning” by Mary Robinson, Poetry Foundation
-
Beginnings Prompt
There are several websites who post poems by well-regarded literary poets on a daily basis, including Poets.Org, Poetry Foundation, and Verse Daily.
For today’s prompt, read poems posted for today on one or all three of these websites.
Select a first line of your choice to begin a poem of your own.
Once your poem draft is more or less complete, remove the first line and give your poem a new and unique title.
If you decide to keep the first line, just credit the poem and poet from which the line is borrowed with an epigraph. Something like “after Emily Dickinson.”
-
Protection Prompt
What are you protecting?
What are you protecting yourself from?
What are you protecting your loved ones from?
Make a short list of items, people, parts of self, or conditions you feel you need to protect or to be protected from.
Next, select one or two items from your list, perhaps related, to write about.
Describe why protection is needed, then describe how you will protect the items, people, or condition you listed.
Sample poems from Zingara Poetry Review:
“Because I Like to Make My Mind Pretty the Way We’re Told to Make our Bodies Pretty, I Work at Thinking Beautiful Things” by Rebecca Macijeski, Zingara Poetry Review
“School Bus” by Michael Chin, Zingara Poetry Review
“Protection” by F.I. Goldhaber, Zingara Poetry Review
-
Journal Splunking
Welcome to day #1 of the 2025 Poem a Day challenge. Your interest, your support, and your encouragement for the project are deeply appreciated. Please enjoy and, as always, happy writing!
Skim entries from old journals and diaries from a year or more ago jotting down interesting words, lines, phrases, sentences or images as you do so.
Don’t overthink — if something jumps out to you, it’s meant to be captured. Resist reading for context and meandering down memory lane.
The goal is to compile a page (or more) of fragments that still resonate emotionally but resist nostalgia and thwart typical associations or your own predictable writing patterns.
After letting your page of fragments “cool,” return a day or so late and write a poem from your compilation.
Poem for Inspiration:
“How I Arrived Here” by Karen Neuberg
-
Play on Words
Did you hear about the movie version of Mariam-Webster Dictionary?
It was a defining moment in cinema.
-
The Magic of Spring: Celebrating Art, Literature, and Community
Hosting breakfast for friends Sunday before St. Patrick’s: It’s been a long time since I had such easy, compatible, generous, and gracious friends to spend my time with. For breakfast, my husband and I made fruit salad, quiche (and failed Irish Soda Bread) and our guests brought flowers, loose leaf tea from Abeille Voyante Tea Co., sweet and savory pastries, and homemade short bread cookies. A perfect way to begin the week.
Spring day on campus after an extra cold, snowy winter that wouldn’t let go. Students spread out their blankets in the sun all across campus, picnicked, read, studied and played volley ball lending a festive air to the afternoon. Too bad the nice weather didn’t linger longer. Even so, spring is near.
Volley Ball games in front of Heinz Chapel 
Students sinning on the lawn of Soldiers and Sailors Memorial
The return of astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, whose extended time in space was both impressive and anxiety provoking. Splashing down off the Gulf Coast of Florida March 18, they have been busy with their 45 day recovery process involving myriad measurements, tests, and re-acclimation to earth’s atmosphere. According to BBC, dolphins surrounded the Dragon space capsule after the splashdown making for a magical homecoming.
Release of Sunrise on the Reaping, prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. I’d forgotten all about it’s forthcoming release until announced earlier this month. Regardless of literary merit, I enjoyed reading the original trilogy and relished the movie adaptations, which, in this case, were as good if not better than the books (rare as that is), at least in my opinion. It may not be exactly the escape I am looking for, but timely and relatable nonetheless. First I need to finish reading the half-dozen books in progress laying open in various rooms of my house!
Madama Butterfly at Benedum Center, Pittsburgh. A groundbreaking new production created by an all Japanese and Japanese American creative team, Madama Butterfly’s story is transported to a fantastical realm where reality and dreams intersect. The production and performance were simply PHENOMENAL, and I can’t recommend it enough (except that March 30 is the last performance). I sat in for pre-performance opera notes for extra insight into decisions made around updating the story and cultural representation for the 21st century. This adaptation has a a surprise ending, which I would never reveal here. After many, MANY years of absence from professionally produced opera, this experience was like an oasis in the desert of my soul.
Preparing for National Poetry Month: After several years navigating hurricanes, a pandemic, several job changes, and working on a competing project, Zingara Poetry Review is coming out of hiatus with a poetry prompt every day in April for National Poetry Month. Poets are invited to write a poem in response to as many or as few prompts as they like over the course of the month. Then, beginning June 1, Zingara Poetry Review will open for submissions for poems inspired by one of the prompts offered in April. Submissions may be overtly related to a prompt, or have only a thread of connection. If you wrote a poem in response to a prompt and threw out all but one line during revision, that counts.So come back each day in April for a new poetry prompt, spend some time in May revising your best drafts, and send 1-2 poems our way beginning in June.
-
Poem a Day Challenge in April
The Zingara Project /Zingara Poetry Review is celebrating the end of its hiatus with a poetry prompt every day in April for National Poetry Month.
Writers are invited to write in response to as many or as few prompts as they like over the course of the month.
Beginning June 1, Zingara Poetry Review will open for submissions for poems inspired by one of the poetry prompts offered in April.
Submissions may be overtly related to a prompt, or have only a thread of connection. If you wrote a poem in response to a prompt and threw out all but one line during revision, that counts.
So come back each day in April for a new poetry prompt, spend some time in May revising your best drafts, and send 1-2 poems our way beginning in June.
Full submission guidelines and instructions will be posted on June 1.
-
Not Your Average Hopscotch
A kiddo’s labor of love and the best three minutes of my morning walk.
Remember when you could easily lose yourself like that on a project?
-
WordPress Hosted Literary Journals accepting submissions
This list is regularly monitored and updated, so come back often to see what’s been added.
Burning House Press: Burning House Press is born from a community arts ethos and focus. We seek to cultivate spaces where people feel safe and encouraged to explore and express their creativity. We hold a belief in the power of creativity, and share a faith in the fundamental connectivity of all peoples, especially as expressed through the commonality and community of multi-disciplinary arts. We believe that capitalism and its attendant profit culture is a public health issue, affecting us all on the level of our mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health and well-being.
Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose: An annual national literary journal seeking works from writers during its fall reading period each year. We publish fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction of both contest winners and other writers in May of each year. The literary journal is produced by the faculty in the Department of English at Fairfield University, and Fairfield undergraduate students gain hands-on experience in helping to edit and produce the journal by taking EN 340: The World of Publishing or The World of Publishing II.
Eyes+ Words: Words have immense power and, when used responsibly, can help shape the world in hopes to make a better tomorrow. Let’s come together and share a story or two. Please feel free to share your original poetry/stories and we will gladly post them on our website, full credit will be given. Email us: EyesPlusWords@gmail.com
Gulf Stream Literary Magazine: Publishing emerging and established writers of exceptional fiction, nonfiction and poetry since 1989. We also publish interviews and book reviews. Past contributors include Sherman Alexie, Steve Almond, Jan Beatty, Lee Martin, Robert Wrigley, Dennis Lehane, Liz Robbins, Stuart Dybek, David Kirby, Ann Hood, Ha Jin, B.H. Fairchild, Naomi Shihab Nye, F. Daniel Rzicznek, and Connie May Fowler. Gulf Stream Magazine is supported by the Creative Writing Program at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.
Little Patuxent Review: Little Patuxent Review is a community-based publication focused on writers and artists from the Mid-Atlantic region, but all excellent work originating in the United States will be considered.Although our issues are organized around themes, we allow considerable leeway in how contributors interpret them in order to ensure access to the broadest range of high-quality work.
The Mantle: Founded in 2017, The Mantle Poetry is an online quarterly journal dedicated to contemporary poetry. We’ll publish the most memorable poems we receive. When the time comes, we’ll nominate for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.
Naugatuk River Review: What NRR is looking for are poems that tell a story, or have a strong sense of story. They can be stories of a moment or an experience, and can be personal, fictional or historical. A good narrative poem that would work for our journal has a compressed narrative, and we prefer poems that take up two pages or less of the journal (50 lines max). We are looking above all for poems that are well-crafted, have an excellent lyric quality and contain a strong emotional core. Any style of poem is considered, including prose poems. Poems with very long lines don’t fit well in the format. Hope this helps
Panoply, A Literary Zine: Join us for a wide-ranging and impressive array of writing
Peacock Journal: strives to publish beautiful creative works. Please read the guidelines below carefully before you submit work (and please note our “Alice’s Restaurant” Rule).
Prosetrics, pronounced as “Pro-zet-ricks,” is an independent publication based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was created with aspiring poets, writers, artists, and photographers in mind. This effort is for the talented people out there who are looking for a place to display their work, and we aim to publish new talent. “Prosetrics” is a combination of prose and poetry in its matrix. In other words, Prosetrics is a prose, art, and photography matrix created by extremely outstanding poets, authors, artists, and photographers around the world.
QuillsEdge Press: A small (yet mighty) non-profit press dedicated to publishing the poetry of womxn and non-binary femmes who are at least 40 years old. Please browse our available books and support the indispensable poetry we’re proud to be publishing. We are committed to equity in publishing, and honor the voices of womxn who are members of historically underrepresented groups.
Third Wednesday began as a monthly writers’ workshop for poets meeting at an Ann Arbor bookstore every third Wednesday. While another literary anthology might seem unnecessary, we believe it’s vital to publish contemporary creative work. Third Wednesday offers writers and artists another opportunity to see their work in print. Our initial focus was publishing compelling poetry, but we’ve expanded to include short fiction and artwork to reach more contributors and satisfy readers’ creative appetites.
Vox Populi A curated webspace for Poetry, Politics, and Nature reaching over 20,000 subscribers each day and featuring over 8,000 archived posts.
The Zingara Project 