the cruelest month

lots of resources for reading and writing your way through National Poetry Month

Apr 1, 2023

Welcome to Write More! This is the your mid-month pop-in, which comes with ideas, encouragement, and writing prompts to keep you going. I also send out a monthly intentions email on the last Sunday before a new month starts that aims to help you think through your goals and intentions for your writing practice in the coming month and to reflect on your progress in the previous month.

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Hello, friends. As folks who’ve been around for a while may remember, this newsletter began its life as a celebration of National Poetry Month. In April 2021, I sent out a prompt every day. (Remember that spring? What a time, with all that wild pandemic vaccines-are-on-their-way energy.) Last April, we worked at a slower pace, with an exercise or experiment every day, and a prompt corraling the work from those experiments every couple of days. This April, I’m taking a bit of a break.

But! I didn’t want to skip the celebration entirely, so I’m sharing a round-up of some of my favorite resources and ways to celebrate the month, and I’m hoping you all will chime in, too.

First, good wishes from the poet laureate herself:

Ada Limón @adalimon

Happy National Poetry Month! I hope this month brings you some ease, some awareness, some sense of connection, some time to read poems, some time to write poems, or even a moment to sit in attention to the earth, the most wondrous poem of all.

a little throwback to last year’s magnolia prompt

prompts, exercises, and experiments from previous years at Write More:

from April 2022, a month of daily exercises, experiments and encouragement; info about that slower approach is here
from April 2021, a month of daily poetry prompts, with an emphasis on revision, process & play; How to Start will give you tips for how to start, and you can go from there.

other internet goodness

From The Academy of American Poets, 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month. (#2 is signing up to get a free copy of the new official poster, featuring a line by poet laureate Ada Limón!)

Todd Dillard is posting daily poetry prompts on twitter; the thread also includes an incredible archive of prompts from 2019, 2020, and 2021:

todd dillard @toddedillard

Happy Poetry Month! I'll be posting (often weird/surreal) prompts for April 30/30. If you find these useful, consider buying my book from @okaydonkeymag, subscribing to a litmag, or buying other books from small presses.

They are indeed weird, in a way I enjoy:

todd dillard @toddedillard

Prompt 2: Think of several different screams you've heard and one profound silence. Write a music review for an album that has for each track one of those screams and as its final track that silence.

The brilliant Eugenia Leigh is Valentines Editor at Honey Literary, which is currently open for submissions. She “I’d LOVE to curate the Valentines section to amplify trans love & trans / nonbinary voices for the next issue.” More info in the thread below! (And if you don’t yet have Eugenia’s new book, Bianca, I’d encourage you to check it out!)

Eugenia Leigh @EugeniaLeigh

Any & all work considered! I’m most interested in work outside the usual “poem” box! Screenshots of love texts, love letters, photos, collages, anything that celebrates trans / nb love! *Especially* looking for BIPOC voices! Full sub guidelines here: honeyliterary.com/submit 2/5

And BOA is running a great sale this month—all poetry, including Bianca, and books by too many of my favorites to even list here (Erike Meitner! Camille Guthrie! Kendra DeColo! Rachel Mennies! Jeannine Hall Gailey! just to start!) are 20% off if you order directly from BOA.

How are you celebrating National Poetry Month? Are there books you’re especially excited to read? Readings you’re going to? Other resources for fun prompts or great sales? I’d love to know!