Bearlodge Writers members Pat Frolander, Maureen Blake, Amanda Fall, and I are participating in the Writer's Digest November Poem-A-Day Chapbook Challenge. Each day in November, Robert Lee Brewer, poet blogger for Writer's Digest, is giving a prompt, and those of us taking the challenge then write a poem tied to the prompt.
Participants can post their work, or not; all four of us have been posting our daily poems. The poems are to be written after receiving the prompt, not previously written work.
The chapbook challenge comes into play after the November prompts have concluded. All participants will have the month of December to revise and organize their November poems into manuscripts of 10-20 pages, emailing the manuscript to Brewer by midnight January 5, 2010. He and his wife, poet Tammy Foster Brewer, will announce a winner on Groundhog Day.
Check out our poems, and those of many other poets, at http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/
(after linking through to the comments page, use your browser's "find on this page" function to locate our names easier; most days have had well over 100 poems posted in the comments)
We are enjoying the process, though it is a bit scary to post poems that have had little (if any) editing. And very interesting to see how the prompt materializes in the poem from each writer.
For me, this is a personal challenge, too, writing on demand to a particular idea--trying to craft a poem on the fly, and create something worthwhile.
Wish us luck! Jeanne Rogers
