April is coming! April is coming! 
Which, of course, means it is time again for the National Poetry Writing Month or NaPoWriMo Challenge (sometimes referred to as the 30/30 challenge because it challenges poets to write 30 poems in 30 days during the month of April).
I first learned about the challenge in 2011 when I teamed up with Bloombars, a community arts space in Washington, D.C.’s up and coming 11th Street corridor, to organize area poets to participate in the challenge. For my part, I came up with an array of prompts–some borrowed, some invented–and created a google group to handle daily distribution of prompts to anyone who signed up.
Last year, I failed–both to organize any events or coordinate the distribution of prompts and in meeting the challenge myself.
This year, I am determined to succeed. I am again partnering with Bloombars and Small is Beautiful (the poetry workshop I host and run, based in NW DC) to create and distribute daily poetry prompts throughout the month of April.
If you’d like to receive the daily prompts, you can sign-up (regardless of whether you are in the DC Metro area). This year, I am organizing my prompts around a couple of themes*:
- Ekphrastic Poetry
- Recycled Poetry (re-using old material in new ways)
- Traditional Forms
- Imitation and/or Persona Poetry
I’ll mix and match these throughout the month. A few other wonderful resources if you want to participate in the challenge:
- NaPoWriMo.net is run by NaPoWriMo founder and poet Maureen Thorson. She also posts daily prompts on the site and has a place where anybody can register their websites/blogs where they are sharing their work from the challenge. Check it out!
- Poets & Writers also has a general prompt section on their website.
You can also follow my blog, Facebook Page, or Twitter (@jonbarrows) to access my daily prompts.
*If you have prompts that fit into these themes, that you’d be willing to share, please send me an email, and if I still have space, I’ll try to work it in.
Waking Words from Clouds 