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Tag: Writing Life
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Accepting Poems!
The Zingara Poetry Project celebration of prompts continues. Please send poems for the following prompts by September 30, 2025:
- April 6: Transformation
- April 7: Humor in Public Spaces
- April 8: Utterance
- April 9: Contradictions
- April 10: Game On
- April 11: Collect, Remix, Repeat
While I have several nice poems to represent prompts posted during tose first week of April, I am still accepting submissions for the following categories:
- April 4: Whispers of Work
- April 5: Absences Unfolded
I’m asking poets to send 1-2 previously unpublished poems inspired by these prompts in the body of an email to ZingaraPoet(at)gmail.com with the NAME OF THE PROMPT included in the subject line. (Replace the (at) with @)
Please also include a few sentences about your writing process (how you got from prompt to final draft) in your email, including any of the revision prompts that helped you along the way (if you used one). I want to know about why you made the choices you made. If even one line, image, or theme from your original draft appears in the final version, it qualifies for this challenge.
Feel free to include an image to accompany your poem.
Poems may be overtly related to any of the prompts, 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. Surprising is preferred to the predictable.
Include a brief professional biography of 50 words or fewer, also in the body of your email.
Simultaneous submissions are fine, just please let me know immediately if submitted work is accepted elsewhere.
Revision Prompts
Be Kind, Rewind
Stanza Is Another Name for Room
Find Your Rhythm
Submission Guidelines
2026 Editorial Calendar with Due Dates and Publication Ranges
Prompt Due Date Pub Date Range April 1: Journal Mining Aug. 31 Jan. 1-11 April 2: Protection Aug. 31 Jan. 12-23 April 3: Beginnings Aug. 31 Jan. 24-Feb 4 April 4: Whispers of Work Aug. 31 Feb. 5-16 April 5: Absences Unfolded Aug. 31 Feb. 17-28 April 6: Transformation Aug. 31 Mar. 1-11 April 7: Humor Sept. 30 Mar. 12-23 April 8: Utterance Sept. 30 Mar. 24-Apr. 4 April 9: Contradictions Sept. 30 Apr. 4-16 April 10: Game On Sept. 30 Apr. 17-28 April 11: Collect, Remix, Repeat Sept. 30 Apr. 29-May 10 April 12: Pro-prose-al Sept. 30 May 11-22 April 13: What You Leave Behind Oct. 31 May 23-Jun 3 April 14: The Thin Veil Oct. 31 Jun 4-15 April 15: Eyesore Oct. 31 Jun 16-27 April 16: Apocryphal Oct. 31 Jun 28-July 9 April 17: 17 Syllables Oct. 31 July 10-21 April 18: Elemental Oct. 31 July 22-July 31 April 19: Chance It Nov. 31 Aug. 1-11 April 20: Temp-orality Nov. 31 Aug. 12-23 April 21: Focus Prompt Nov. 31 Aug. 24-Sept. 4 April 22: Intangible Inheritance Nov. 31 Sept. 5-16 April 23: By Any Other Name Nov. 31 Sept. 17-28 April 24: Hands On Nov. 31 Sept. 29-Oct. 10 April 25: In Tune Nov. 31 Oct. 11-22 April 26: Not the Kind You Flip Dec. 31 Oct. 23-31 April 27: Top of the Morning Dec. 31 Nov. 1-11 April 28: Child’s Play Dec. 31 Nov. 11-22 April 29: Endings that Shape Us Dec. 31 Nov. 23-Dec. 3 April 30: Course and Method Dec. 31 Dec. 3-14 Revision Prompts Dec. 31 Dec. 15-31 -
Cultivating and Sustaining Writing Communities Panel
For the first time in countless years of trying, an AWP panel I’m a part of has been accepted, my first and only so far.
I’m very excited to be presenting with Emmy Perez, Lorna Dee Cervantes and Guadalupe Mendez and deeply appreciate Rebecca Aronson, our moderator, for pulling this excellent panel together and including me on the roster.
So, this year I won’t just be tagging along or volunteering to man a booth or table, I’ll actually be part of the program.
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Find Your Rhythm
I’m never one to impose rigid patterning into or onto a poem, but if a rhythmic pattern exists, the poet may want to take advantage of it.
Scan several poems you wrote in April and determine if they have a natural rhythm and/or meter.
Did you serendipitously write a poem in iambic pentameter or some other meter?
Do your lines seem to consistently contain a certain number of syllables?
Whatever you discover about your poems’ rhythms, lean into those rhythms and make them more intentional, more deliberate.
Once you identify a poem’s pattern, interrupt it once or twice to create interest and tension.
For example, if your poem contain 8 syllables per line, revise or write a line or two that contains 7 or 9 syllables.
If your poems seems to utilize anapestic hexameter, throw a dactyl or a heptameter into the mix.
Remember to keep the rhythm as natural as possible to avoid slipping into sing-songi-ness or Yoda speak.
Below is a quick review of feet and meters for reference.
See what arises for you, but don’t feel compelled to force anything.
Feet in Poetry
Iamb: a metrical foot containing two syllables, the first of which is unstressed and the latter of which is stressed (e.g., “today”).
Trochee: a metrical foot containing two syllables, the first of which is stressed and the second of which is unstressed (e.g., “matter”).
Spondee: a less common metrical foot in which two consecutive syllables are stressed (e.g., “A.I.”).
Anapest: a metrical foot containing three syllables, the first two of which are unstressed and the last of which is stressed (e.g., “unaware”).
Dactyl: a metrical foot containing three syllables, the first stressed and the following two unstressed (e.g., “Waverly”).
Meter in Poetry
The length of poetic meter is described using Greek suffixes:
Monometer – one foot, one beat per line
Dimeter – two feet, two beats per line
Trimeter – three feet, three beats per line
Tetrameter – four feet, four beats per line
Pentameter – five feet, five beats per line
Hexameter – six feet, six beats per line
Heptameter – seven feet, seven beats per line
Octameter – eight feet, eight beats per line
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Stanza Is Another Name for Room
Revise a poem by reorganizing its stanzas considering how each choice affects the poem’s structure, language, syntax, continuity, rhythm, chronology, and imagery as you work.
Some approaches worth exploring include:
- Breaking a single-stanza poem into multiple stanzas.
- Conversely, placing a multi-stanza poem into a single stanza.
- Creating uniform stanzas that contain the same number of lines: couplets, tercets, quatrains, quintains, sestets, octets, Spencerian (9-line stanza), or dizains.
- Disrupting uniform stanzas by varying the number of lines in each one.
- Creating a pattern using indentation. For example, indent every other line of a stanza or every other stanza; center some lines but not others; use right marginalization, etc.
- Rearranging the stanzas — backward, forward, from the inside out.
- Experimenting with multiple approaches then returning the poem to its original form but with new content created during the process.
As you might guess, the goal is to discover the poem’s “about-ness” through serious play and experimentation. Aim for process rather than product, change over predictability.
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Chance It
Use the following nouns and verbs in a poem (you can use all or some, but aim for at least five words from each list:
- salad
- currency
- assumption
- affair
- disaster
- pie
- drawer
- physics
- sir
- professor
- warm
- ask
- crush
- saw
- unpack
- trouble
- move
- pedal
- fence
- tour
If this particular group of words don’t spark your creativity, try one of several “random word” generators available on the internet to produce different set.
Just search “random word generator” or even “random noun generator” or “random verb generator” to find one you’d like to try.
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Elemental
Each zodiac sign is ruled by an element: fire, earth, air, or water, and each element is characterized by an individual’s strengths and tendencies.
But how each star sign is affected by its element is unique to that sign, and your horoscope describes or predicts what may happen to you based on the position of the stars and planets at the time of your birth.
For today’s prompt, write a poem based on your horoscope for the day, week, month or year, or one based your zodiac sign’s personality traits.
You can opt to use your sign according to the 12 month horoscope associated with Western traditions, or the lunar horoscope associated with the Eastern.
To discover your Eastern sign, consult this (or another) Chinese Zodiac Calculator
For profiles and horoscopes based on the 12-month zodiac, consult Horoscope.com for inspiration, but you should absolutely choose a horoscope source that you like best.
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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.”
The Zingara Project 