Resources and Prompts for National Poetry Month
April is National Poetry Month, which is a great opportunity to dive into poetry, whether or not you usually write it. If you do write it, it’s an opportunity to geek out with all your fellow poetry lovers. If you don’t, it’s an opportunity to try it out. Fiction and even nonfiction writers can learn a lot from experimenting with poetry. Creating evocative imagery, varying sentence rhythm and length, choosing just the right word, playing with language... these can all help you get out of any ruts your prose might have fallen into. Besides, it’s fun! If you’re not a poet, you don’t have to take your poetry so seriously. There’s no pressure to publish, and no one ever has to read it but you.
Give It a Whirl: Writing Exercises for National Poetry Month
Last week we talked about poetry techniques for fiction or nonfiction. How about writing some actual poetry? For some prose writers, that’s a hell, no! I get it. It’s a totally different form. But you can write in any form of poetry you like! Prose poetry is a thing. So is free verse. If you want to, you can look at all kinds of forms of poetry and their rules for a special challenge.
What Fiction Writers Can Learn from Poetry
It’s National Poetry Month! I often feel like poetry is seen as “literary” and cut off from the popular imagination. Robert Pinsky’s The Favorite Poem Project and NPR’s recent invitation to submit poems via Twitter and TikTok help bring poetry back to the everyday. Fiction and nonfiction get far more attention from the media and the public, of course, and often people, even writers, fall firmly in the prose or poetry camps.
However, there is a lot prose writers can learn from poetry. Especially if you’re feeling like your writing is a little stale, you can learn to play with words again by paying attention to some of the techniques poets use.