NaPoWriMo 2026 Discussion Thread

[Tallyfire]

April 15th:

K. Siva Reddy’s poem, “A Love Song Between Two Generations,” weaves together repetitions, questions, and unexpected similes with plain language. The overall effect is both intimate and emotional, producing a long-form meditation on what love is, what it means, and how it acts. Today, we’d like you to write your own poem that muses on love, but isn’t a traditional love poem in the sense of expressing love between romantic partners.

 

[Tallyfire]

April 16th:

In “Ocean,” Robinson Jeffers delivers an almost oracular, scriptural description of the sea not just as a geographical phenomenon, but a sort of being – old, wise, profound, and able to teach those who want to learn. Today, try writing a poem in which you describe something that cannot speak, and what it has taught or told you.

 

[Tallyfire]

Ocean is a poem I think I’ll have to read again and again. Wow.

One thing I’m enjoying this month is seeing my understanding of what poetry is (and isn’t) change. I’ve always wanted to read more about it and NaPoWriMo is a lovely resource for that.

 

[Woof]

Ocean is a poem I think I’ll have to read again and again. Wow.

One thing I’m enjoying this month is seeing my understanding of what poetry is (and isn’t) change. I’ve always wanted to read more about it and NaPoWriMo is a lovely resource for that.

I agree. There's a lot to love in it and a little extra in each read. What surprises me most is it was written in the 1920s by a guy who died in the 1960s but it sounds like it was born of that beatnik era at the earliest, or even influenced by it.

I think it points to one aspect of what you were saying about feeling your understanding of the nature of poetry shifting the more you explore. For me, it's recognising the simplification of poetry into eras of style is just a retroactive tidying up of fashions through history and is in no way definitive.

 

[Tallyfire]

April 17th:

Sergio Raimondi’s poem, “Today Matsuo Basho Cooks,” plays on the following haiku by (you guessed it), Matsuo Basho:

Crimson pepper pod!
Add two pairs of wings, and look—
darting dragonfly.

For today’s challenge, write a poem in which you respond to a favorite poem by another poet.

 

[Tallyfire]

What surprises me most is it was written in the 1920s by a guy who died in the 1960s but it sounds like it was born of that beatnik era at the earliest, or even influenced by it.

I don’t know anything about beatnik style or eras of poetry, but I was also surprised by its age! I would have guessed much later.

 

[Woof]

I don’t know anything about beatnik style or eras of poetry, but I was also surprised by its age! I would have guessed much later.

I know a little from broken bits of formal study that honestly almost completely put me off poetry. I've been having a bit of a poke around though with renewed curiosity and found this site interesting: beatdom

 

[Socks Fox]

I know a little from broken bits of formal study that honestly almost completely put me off poetry. I've been having a bit of a poke around though with renewed curiosity and found this site interesting: beatdom

What's interesting is the irony of the beatnik scene becoming a prominent and exclusionary group within academia. If you've ever encountered the clique that loves to exclude others due to their inferiorities some of these groups are the archetype. They have become the very thing they sought to rebel against through enlightened and intellectual superiority.

 

[Tallyfire]

April 18th:

When I was growing up, there was a book of poems in my house (I believe it was The Best Loved Poems of the American People) that was heavy on long, maudlin, narrative poems with lots and lots of rhyme – the sort of verse that used to be parodied on Bulwinkle’s Corner. As the twentieth century rolled in, poems like this were relegated to the status of stuff-schoolkids-were-forced-to-memorize, and they plummeted even further into our cultural memory-hole as learning poems by heart fell out of educational currency. But while some work in this style is extremely cringeworthy (I’m looking at you, “Bingen on the Rhine”), they can also be very fun to read. Take, for example, Sadakichi Hartmann’s “The Pirate,” or Alfred Noyes’s “The Highwayman.” The action is dramatic, there’s lots of emotions, and the imagery is striking.

Today, we don’t challenge you to write all of a long, dramatic, narrative poem, but we invite you to try your hand at writing a poem that could be a section or piece of one. Include rhyme, include unlikely and dramatic scenes (maybe a poem about a bank robbery! Or an avalanche! Or Roman gladiators! Or an enormous ball held by mermaids, where there is an undercurrent (hee) of palace intrigue!) Basically, a poem with the plot of an opera (evil twins! Egyptian tombs! Star-crossed lovers! Tigers for no apparent reason!)

 

[Woof]

What's interesting is the irony of the beatnik scene becoming a prominent and exclusionary group within academia. If you've ever encountered the clique that loves to exclude others due to their inferiorities some of these groups are the archetype. They have become the very thing they sought to rebel against through enlightened and intellectual superiority.

I know exactly what you mean unfortunately. Grey areas, fluidity, that becomes suddenly very absolute once a little bit of power is added into the mix. It's the inevitability of recognition, remuneration and the endorphins popularity releases I think.
I like to believe I'd do better but that's spoken from a place of never having had to test that theory and I don't expect to

 

[Tallyfire]

April 19th:

The word florilegium refers to a book of botanical illustrations of decorative plants and also a collection of excerpts from other writings. In her poem, “Florilegium,” Canadian poet Sylvia Legris gathers together many five-lined stanzas that describe flowers but also play with the sounds of their names, their medical (or poisonous) qualities, and historical aspects of herbalism. Today, pick a flower or two (or a whole bouquet, if you like) from this online edition of Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers. Now, write your own poem in which you muse on your selections’ names and meanings. If you’re so inclined, you could even do some outside research into your flowers, and incorporate facts that you learn into your work.

 

[Woof]

I'm loving the featured participant poem today here.
Still working away on mine for that prompt and struggling, but that one is brilliant. Better than the prompt resource.

 

[Tallyfire]

April 20th:

Start by reading the poem below, written by Carl Phillips:


Black Swan on Water

Seen this way,
through that lens where need
and wanting swim at random

toward each other, away again, and
now and then together, he moves less like
a swan—black, or otherwise—than like any

man for whom sex is, or has at last become,
an added sense by which to pass ungently but more
entirely across a life where, in between the silences,

he leaves what little he’s got to show for himself
behind him in braids of water, green-to-blue wake of
Please and Don’t hurt me and You can see I’m hurt, already.


You may not realize it at first, but the poem is a single sentence! The three-line stanzas mimic the “braids in water” in the penultimate line, and the way the lines get longer and longer also makes the poem as a whole look a bit like the widening wake that a swan leaves as it swims.

For today, try writing your own poem that uses an animal that shows up in myths and legends as a metaphor for some aspect of a contemporary person’s life. Include one spoken phrase.