Everyday Poetry

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...