Everyday Poetry

Day 30: " In his poem, “ Angels ,” Russell Edson speaks of spiritual warrior-messenger-guardians as if they were a type of endangered animal. Today, try writing your own poem that discusses a real or mythical being with the same sort of musing yet dispassionate tone." I've just had a conversation with my daughter about the demons that haunt you during intentional weight loss. We've both spent years trying to rid ourselves of negative self- talk,  but they still creep in when you least expect it.   It's a bit of a negative way to end this year's NaPoWriMo but it does provide a bookend on the same theme as it started - dieting!  Diet Demons They lurk in patient exile Biding their time to weedle in At the first signs of self doubt. Sneers peer over your shoulder As you step on the scales, Whispering fear in your ear. Each cinch of your belt Innocently questions the buckle:   Will the prong reach its usual hole? Greet your reflection with a smile And they will ...

Day 29: " In “ After Turning the Clocks Back ,” Jennifer Moxley links present with past, using a few well-placed details to invoke both a sense of the daily “now” and a nostalgic sense of the speaker’s long-ago life. In your poem today, similarly compare your everyday present life with your past self, using specific details to conjure aspects of your past and present in the reader’s mind." Only one more day to go! This is a great prompt, despite feeling daunted by Moxley's masterful poem. What to write about? I've vowed to stop banging on about mobility issues, so perhaps I'll revisit the differences between my two marriages, twenty years in.  Twenty Years In Hot coffee and unhurried time  Spent talking through our lives Are your gifts to me those mornings You're not off to chase the glory Of the biggest catch.  I remember a time Of early nights and early mornings A refuge from all-night, bare-all sessions, Where we picked over what was going wrong, Tried to p...

Day 28: " Victoria Chang’s poem, “ The Lovers ,” is short and somewhat shocking, bringing us quickly from a near-hallucinatory descriptive statement to a strange sort of question, before ending on the very direct statement of a “truth.” Six lines, three sentences, and to top it off, a title that I think works for the poem but is only obliquely related to its text. Today, try writing a poem that follows the same beats: three sentences, six lines: statement, question, conclusion." I went to see a consultant about my arthritic knee yesterday and was basically told to come back after I'd had the hip replacement I'm waiting for. I was expecting this but was holding onto the possibility of having a steroid injection to relieve the pain until then,  but was told it was out of the question before I even asked.   Disappointment  Air is knocked from lungs Poised ready to request relief.  Is there nothing to do but wait, See how things turn out? Hope lies discarded; A chif...

Day 27: " Start by reading Robert Fillman’s poem, “ There should always be two .” Now, write your own poem in which all the verses contain the same number of lines (whether couplets, triplets, quatrains, etc.) and in which you give the reader instructions of some kind." I feel like it's time to return to writing about my family, specifically my three grandchildren. I've rewritten the final stanza several times, sometimes losing the sense of an instruction, sometimes with it featuring more prominently,  but I'm relatively happy with its final form.  Three's a Crowd There's the one grabbing me as I walk in the door, Proudly showing me their latest creation,  Roping me in to cooking crumble for lunch.  There's the one shouting a greeting from the other room, Too busy accumulating crystals or brain rot To see me face to face until called to eat.  There's the one sleeping upstairs, snoozing off a late night,  Who emerges at the table sleepy eyed and gro...

Day 26: " The Latin phrase  ars poetica  means “the art of poetry.” It’s been a tradition going all the way back to  Horace  for poets to write poems that lay out – whether explicitly or obliquely – some statement about why the poet writes, or what they think poetry is. Here’s  a very recent example , and another that I had to  study in school . Today, we challenge you to write your own  ars poetica , giving the reader some insight into what keeps you writing poetry, or what you think poetry should do." I've written quite a few on this theme already,  but there's always room for one more. This one developed into a kind of spoken word rap after the first two lines found their own rhythm and rhyme.  Ars Poetica It' s a  testing of the water  too deep for conversation, A wider way of sharing a solitary observation; It's a different way of talking, a means of communication, A revisiting of meaning, a more detailed clarification; It's a ...

Day 25: " write your own poem in which you use at least three metaphors for a single thing, include an exclamation, ruminate on the definition of a word, and come back in the closing line to the image or idea with which you opened the poem." Crikey! That's a long list of things to include...  I've just had a WhatsApp exchange with my daughter, in which we used lots of photos, emoji and gifs to basically say we love each other, through thick and thin.  Queen Our love is elastic, stretching across the gap Between where you stand t aking hesitant selfies To where I'm looking for the light in your sunshaded eyes .  You caveat each exchange with a head-in-hands monkey,  Laughing emoji, apologetic humility, As if you aren't a queen, s tanding there i n your jeans and t shirt!   Cast off your definition of ideal beauty, Know it is a shackle, a tool designed to make us fail; We have no need to apologise for the space we inhabit. My penguin gushes tears as it claps ...

Day 24: " write a poem that takes place at night, and describes something magical or strange that happens but that no one is awake (or around) to notice." Today I am tempted to write a bit of light fantastical nonsense, a flight of fancy. It feels like it could be the beginning of a longer piece.  Night shades At night the shadows flit, Silently occupying the spaces  Filled during daylight hours With human noise and busyness.  The shades float, balletic, soundless,  Testing the shape of each room,  Reclaiming their space like black dye in water, Ready to dissipate at the sound of a footfall,  The first glimmer of dawn.   © Copyright 2026. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved

Day 23: " today’s (optional) prompt takes its inspiration from Kiki Petrosino’s loose villanelle, “ Nursery. ” Try your hand today at your own take on a  villanelle , and have the poem end on a question." Now,  I  rather like a villanelle,  but it is very tricky.   For those of you who are asking yourself WHAT??? the villanelle is a French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas. These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain. In addition, there is a regular rhyme scheme of aba.  First things first The clothes rotate in the washing machine,  There's dirt on the floor, dishes in the sink, I know everything needs to get clean.  It's in the worst state it ever has been Creeping up slowly, it's now at the brink,  So clothes rotate in the washing machine. I'm preoccupied, have turned my back on rout...

Day 22: " write your own poem in which the speaker is in dialogue with him or herself.  Jaswinder Bolina’s poem “ Mood Ring ” imagines the speaker as both himself and an interior being (who happens to take the form of a small donkey). It’s quite silly . . . and not silly at the same time. A sort of “serious fun.” " I don't have a donkey inside me - small or otherwise - but I've written a few times of having an inner dialogue between conflicting sides of myself. Perhaps it might help to think of having something separate trying to help me break out of my set ways? Wise Monkey Monkey waited for his chance Impatient for some fun.  You're really boring nowadays,  Old age has near begun.  Life used to be quite crazy You'd be flitting here and there,  But now you seem forever Rooted in that chair.  Get up, get out, just shake yourself, You've lost the zest of youth.  Offended, I protested,  But saw he spoke some truth.  Get going or you'll lose the...

Day 21: " In her poem, “ Names and Nicknames ,” Monika Kumar reminisces over various nicknames she has been given, the actual name her mother gave her, and the way both names and nicknames indicate a claim and an intimacy at once. In your poem for today, we challenge you to write your own poem in which you muse on your name and nicknames you’ve been given." Strangely I had a conversation about nicknames 2 days ago with my granddaughter. She was telling me about the nicknames her friends have been given,  but she doesn't have one.  Just like her I never had a nickname as a child, and it was always rather a disappointment.  Secret names Our given names come from our parents,  But the name most treasured comes from friends,  Our secret name, our special name,  Shared only by those in the know.  At school, we pondered long and hard,  Tried out suggestions for size,  Rolled them around our mouths until they fit,  Or didn't.   Throug...

Day 20: " 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." This poem is for anyone who has transformed a tired way of life as a result of a determined decision.  But for one person in particular.   Phoenix She rises, dusts off the ashes of her last incarnation, Surprised by her unfamiliar framed reflection,  Stretches wings s hining with the golden glow  Of new feathers hesistantly tried on for size. The dull weight of old aches transformed Into newfound crackling energy, Possibility draws her forward, Her old self left far behind.  You always were a drama queen.  © Copyright 2026. Chris Auger. All Rights Reserved

Day 19: " 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." I've picked my favourite (the daffodil),  my daughter's (the rose), and my  mum's (the freesia).  Like us, they wouldn't make a coherent bouquet, but singly they are all rather special. Legris doesn't name the flowers in her verses and I've followed suit, hoping their identity is obvious from the description.  As an additional clue each verse begins with the first two letters of each flower.  Dancing in the breeze, faces demurely lowered, Pure unadulterated joy in a swathe of sunlit gold,  A s...

Day 18: "Take inspiration from  dramatic narrative poems such as  Alfred Noyes’s “ The Highwayman .” The action is dramatic, there’s lots of emotions, and the imagery is striking.  We invite you to try your hand at writing something that could be a section or piece of such a poem. " This is way out of my comfort zone! Dramatic narrative poems have a whole structure of their own. The Highwayman has 15 syllable lines and a rhyme scheme of aabccb. Well, you gotta love a challenge, and whilst there's no pirates, bank robbers or mermaids, there's plenty of emotion and drama. The girl she is a hurricane, a force both fierce and wild, You'd think she was a changeling, not the common human child, She'll be completely charming for an hour, become enraged the next, You'd never think it possible,                                                       ...

Day 17: " write a poem in which you respond to a favorite poem by another poet." The difficult part is choosing which of my favourites to respond to! In the end I settled on a poem I enjoyed yesterday:  Elizabeth Boquet's The Blues , which in turn is after Wendy Cope's Some More Light Verse ", both excellent poems. My poem is more by way of self encouragement than a reflection of achievement.   You can do it! You have to try. You have to walk. You put it off. It's only talk. You say you will. You know you won't. You pretend you want to, but you don't. You sit for hours. You get quite stiff. You sigh and dream. You live in 'if'. You have to move. No pain no gain. But standing hurts. You sit again. You know there's nothing left to do, But grit your teeth and push on through. You try one day. You walk for ten. The next day twelve. You try again. You try so hard. You don't give up. You reach twenty, and speed up. You still hurt. You still ...

Day 16: " Try writing a poem in which you describe something that cannot speak, and what it has taught or told you." This prompt brought to mind the image I turn to whenever I'm stressed out: in a dentist chair, having a medical procedure, whatever. It immediately floods me with calm and i will be forever grateful to my ex-husband for suggesting it to me as a useful technique,  as I lay there on that Portuguese beach so many decades ago.    In a weird coincidence, after I'd written this I discovered that I wrote about this same thing exactly two years ago in a response to a Napowrimo prompt, which shows this specific memory is still strong even if my short term memory is failing!  Refuge I carry with me a blessing. A memory Of sand-worn, sun-bleached azure slats Will summon the peace of a drowsy moment Basking in slightly-too-hot, but longed-for sunshine, The smell of sardines over an open flame, The laughter of children on the breeze. Conjured, it can drown any pres...

Day 15: "  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." My poem deals with love we have for our animal companions, who are just as much a part of our family as our human relatives.  Portal She's telling me of her golden retriever  Chewie, Named after Chewbacca, and twice as furry. An old man now, he stalks stiffly across the screen,  Noses her hand, huge eyed. She tells of vets visits, Of accidents in the night, of lumps and tests, and worry. She hugs him tight, once for herself and once for me,  Our own issues on hold while we share unspoken memories,  Sorrow and a...

Day 14: " Poetry is an ancient art, and one that revisits themes that existed thousands of years ago – love, nature, jealousy. But that doesn’t mean that poets live in a sort of pre-history unaffected by technological advances. Emily Dickinson wrote about  trains , and I’m rather charmed by  this 1981 poem  about the “incredible hair” of actors on television. In a more recent example, Becca Klaver’s “ Manifesto of the Lyric Selfie ” draws inspiration from the contemporary drive to document everything in digital photographs. Today, we challenge you to write a poem that similarly bridges (whether smoothly or not) the seeming divide between poetry and technological advances." Well, my poem just had to be about gaming! My grandsons and (to a lesser extent) my granddaughter are hooked on Roblox games, and disappear up to their rooms straight after lunch whenever I'm visiting on a Sunday.  Hopefully it's not just an excuse to get away from boring old Granny!  Generati...

Day 13: " read Walter de la Mare’s poem “ A Song of Enchantment ” then, John Berryman’s poem “ Footing Our Cabin’s Lawn, Before the Wood .” Both poems work very differently, yet leave you with a sense of the near-fantastical possibilities of the landscapes they describe. Try  your hand today at writing a poem about a remembered, cherished landscape. It could be your grandmother’s backyard, your schoolyard basketball court, or a tiny strip of woods near the railroad tracks. At some point in the poem, include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal, spoken speech – like a rhyme, or syntax that feels old-fashioned or high-toned." My memory is of one afternoon on the working farm we used to visit in the holidays, owned by Ma and Pop, our proxy grandparents. We would have been visiting them from birth until we were pre-teens, and were not allowed to wander far afield, our play restricted to the farm and its gardens. I've used a regular rhyme scheme like Walter de ...

Day 12: "   Amarjit Chandan  has a pretty wild biography, but his poetry is often focused on place and memory – with his hometown of Nakodar appearing repeatedly. His poem “ Uncle Mohan Singh ” recounts, with a sort of dreaminess, a memory of the titular uncle playing the accompaniment to a silent film. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that recounts a memory of a beloved relative, and something they did that echoes through your thoughts today." Sundays are always a rush,  to get things done before I go over to see my son and grandkids. Today is even more important as it's the youngest's 9th birthday.  I'm reminded of the childhood Sundays we spent round my aunt's, and the generosity she always showed her nieces.  She had a tragic start in life, losing her husband and miscarrying their child, but I  remember her always being as cheerful as her name would imply. She introduced me to my first husband, and without her I'd not have had m...

Day 11: " Erasure poetry — also known as blackout poetry — is written by taking an existing text and erasing or blacking out individual words. Here’s a  great explainer with examples , and you’ll find another  here . Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own erasure/blackout poem." I turned to today's page in the book Everyday Nature by Andy Beer, and found it featured the Willow Warbler. I was sceptical about this technique at first,  but it discovered it can yield some surprisingly evocative results.  Erasure Song      birdsong                 a rapid descending trill                                            soft as summer rain                                 tune in get to know        ...

Day 10: " In his poem, “ Goodbye ,” Geoffrey Brock describes grief in three short stanzas, the second of which is entirely made up of a rhetorical dialogue. Today, write your own meditation on grief. Try using Brock’s form as the “container” for your poem: a few short stanzas, with a middle section in which a question is repeated with different answers given." Grief is a hard theme to write about, but it comes in many forms. Like Brock, I've chosen to write about a long ago broken heart.  The Depth of a Crevasse  Sufficient time has passed. You'd never know from my face That deep inside there hides A messy raw patch, still bleeding.  (Did you ever really love me?  I told you not to fall in love with me.  How could I know the risk was so big? Who knows the depth of a crevasse?) They told me time heals. It's almost true. The years have shrunk the grief To a small messy patch, which bleeds Only when I think to poke it.   © Copyright 2026. Chris Auger. All...

Day 9: " Marianne Moore  was a well-known modernist poet, with a curious taste in  hats . Though she wrote on many themes, I’ve always had some affection for her many poems about – or in the voice of – animals, such as “ The Fish ,” “ Dock Rats ,” “ The Pangolin ,” and “ No Swan so Fine .” Today, try writing your own poem in the voice of an animal or plant, or a poem that describes a specific animal or plant with references to historical events or scientific facts." I've decided to write about the grey squirrel who visits our garden, tempted by the easy pickings available. Little does he know what strong emotions he arouses in us.  Squirrel The crafty beast, d iminuitive, nervous, That c urls his tail round the pole as he grips Upside down, with perfect, tiny paws,  Does not know, or care, that he should not be here But should be living out his life on another continent. He does not know how the Victorian upper class Carried his forebears across the ocean to adorn th...