It seems that I do NaPoWriMo about every other year, because it is now 2026, and I finally feel like I might be in the headspace to try again! You can find my poems from previous years here and here. 2022 was my first year doing this, I skipped 2023 because I was writing my thesis, 2024 I had more flexibility during my postdoc, I skipped 2025 since I was on the market for jobs, and now I finally have a tenure track position which was the ultimate goal (I will need to update my blog about my experience being a baby professor and how I got my job on the east coast soon). Since I am almost done with teaching this semester, I think I will be able to do it this month, and I am looking forward to this journey. I will be writing a poem a day in response to prompts posted online to this website. I will update this post with my daily poems.
*The italicized text gives the context and prompt for each day
DAY 0: Write [a] poem in which you refer to a specific writer or artist (or work of literature/art) and make a declarative statement about want or desire. Set the poem in a particular, people-filled place, like a restaurant, bus station, museum, school, etc.
The rhythmic vibrations begin in the tracks under my seat and reverberate through my bones, sending my spine in an undulating motion reminiscent of a warmer past life on the opposite coast. The faint call can be heard in the depths of my imagination: “Anything off the trolley, dears?” At thirty-one, my resonant bones brimming with memories of a little girl, twenty years ago, hoping, wishing, dreaming of receiving the letter, mixed with a single drop of fresh toxins, controversies with the power to pollute the whole ancient reservoir.
DAY 1: The tanka is an ancient Japanese poetic form. In contemporary English versions, it often takes the shape of a five-line poem with a 5 / 7 / 5 / 7 / 7 syllable-count – kind of like a haiku that decided to keep going. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own tanka – or multi-tanka poem. Theme and tone are up to you, but try to maintain the five-line stanza and syllable count.
I understand why
mom was so against my plan
to wear pajamas
in a public location:
womanhood precludes comfort.
DAY 2: Write [a] poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.
Behind the scenes, pulling the strings was always my preferred chair to occupy:
standing behind the camera zooming in on my friends’ expressions,
hair frizzy, skin sticky and dripping from sun and intermittent monsoon showers,
snipping footage and stitching clips together
polished with background music and titles.
Even as a child, editing home videos to display at the end of the summer,
I was never the face of the product, not even a pinky finger visible on screen,
everything was ultimately bound, woven by my fingers alone –
I’m more excited than I ever thought I’d be,
crafting our scientific paper in Overleaf, preparing for submission,
entering my own name, last of all in the author list –
first authorship, my face on the front page could never compare
to silent awareness of ownership and freedom.
DAY 3: Write a poem in which a profession or vocation is described differently than it typically is considered to be.
The more pink, the more glitter, the more blush, the better, the more tinkling of my earings dangling from two piercings but a millimeter apart, clashing together like my right and left brains, the creative and the analytical, as I sashay back and forth across the whiteboard scribbling mathematical proofs in the bright pink dry-erase marker I picked up from CVS earlier that week.
DAY 4: Craft your own short poem that involves a weather phenomenon and some aspect of the season.
The temperature oscillates between fifty-two and seventy-three degrees,
toasty, compared to two months ago, when the Schuyllkill resembled a skating rink
I wish it would climb to the degree of wearing shorts with no fear my limbs’ll freeze
The cherry blossoms are in “peak bloom”, but to me they look more white than pink
As if the past two months brought no change, globs of snow-dust coating the trees
I long for summer, lazy river swims, art-picnics with berries and citrus-drinks
In spring, the sun peeks out, teasing, only to be quickly overshadowed by a biting breeze.
DAY 5: Write a poem in which you talk about disliking something – particularly something utterly innocuous, like clover. Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.
My brain registers the nausea before words,
the characteristic vomit-smell raising the hairs in my nostrils before my tearful eyes
can process the creamy white substance they shovel into their mouths.
Yogurt. It’s good for you. You must eat it.
What if I don’t like yogurt? I’d asked my Kathak teacher.
Think about it like medicine.
If you like sweet, eat it with some sugar.
If you like sour, eat it with some lemon.
Instinctively, my hand went to pinch the airways of my nostrils
as we entered the cafeteria,
the scent wafting from the neat rows, plastic cups of dahi
topped off with a layer of lime,
immediately triggering my gag reflex.
I ate in a separate room, shielding my eyes from mouths chewing the creme
I told everyone I was allergic, because it came closest
to explaining my extreme reaction.
One of my best friends was obsessed with plain yogurt,
eating it plain, putting it on pasta or crepes,
going as far as to add “I love plain yogurt” in her Instagram bio.
I respect her preference but forbid her
from mentioning this proclivity while I’m eating.
In 2021, her birthday fell during the lockdown –
we planned a surprise party for her on Zoom, greeting her
while eating cups of plain yogurt in our respective homes.
Even for a friend, I refused to enter a 100 meter radius of a drop of yogurt,
so I took a white label, wrote “PLAIN YOGURT” in bold sharpie,
fixing it on my tea mug, holding it to the screen conspicuously
while shielding my eyes from the gallery of screens with the real thing,
lest I become moved to violently eject my tea through my nostrils.
DAY 6: Try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream.
I woke up to the soft chimes of my alarm,
the default Samsung setting that I always fear will be too soft
to shake me out of my sweet slumber.
I had lost track of time in the morning, shirking my
preparation routine to coat a long popsicle stick with
shiny gel pen ink, each stroke inducing a gradient
blending into a new color until the stick resembled
a nearly one-dimensional rainbow.
The clock flashed 7:09, and delivered the crushing information
I had surely missed the train,
sitting with the realization that I would need to drive through my morning stupor,
tugging my eyes open by violently blasting the air
on my cheeks while screaming along to upbeat pop songs,
until the chimes rung through my dreams at 5:55 am.
DAY 7: In her poem, “Front Yard Rhyme,” Cecily Parks evokes the sing-songy beats that accompany girls’ clapping games, and jump-rope and skipping rhymes. Today, we challenge you to write your own poem that emulates these songs – something to snap, clap, and jump around to.
Clickedy-clack. The keyboard. Crunch crunch. My late night snack. Slurp Slurp. My dog grooming herself. Whirrr whirrr. The cool air-conditioner fan that I might have to switch to heat since the spring weather can’t make up its mind.
DAY 8: Use a simple phrase repeatedly, and then make statements that invert or contradict that phrase.
Poem will go here 🙂
DAY 9: 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.
Poem will go here 🙂
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.
Poem will go here 🙂
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. Some folks have written whole books of erasures/blackouts, including Chase Berggrun’s R E D (which is based on Dracula), Jen Bervin’s Nets (which is based on Shakespeare’s sonnets), and what is one of the grand-daddies of erasures as a form, Ronald Johnson’s Radi Os (which is based on Paradise Lost). Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own erasure/blackout poem.
Poem will go here 🙂
DAY 12: Write your own poem that recounts a memory of a beloved relative, and something they did that echoes through your thoughts today.
Poem will go here 🙂
DAY 13: Try your hand today at writing your own 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.
Poem will go here 🙂
DAY 14: Write a poem that bridges (whether smoothly or not) the seeming divide between poetry and technological advances.
Poem will go here 🙂
DAY 15: Write your own poem that muses on love, but isn’t a traditional love poem in the sense of expressing love between romantic partners.
Poem will go here 🙂
DAY 16: Try writing a poem in which you describe something that cannot speak, and what it has taught or told you.
Poem will go here 🙂
DAY 17: Write a poem in which you respond to a favorite poem by another poet.
Poem will go here 🙂
DAY 18: Today, we don’t challenge you to write all of a long, dramatic, narrative poem, but we invite you to try your hand at writing a poem that could be a section or piece of one. Include rhyme, include unlikely and dramatic scenes (maybe a poem about a bank robbery! Or an avalanche! Or Roman gladiators! Or an enormous ball held by mermaids, where there is an undercurrent (hee) of palace intrigue!) Basically, a poem with the plot of an opera (evil twins! Egyptian tombs! Star-crossed lovers! Tigers for no apparent reason!)
Poem will go here 🙂
DAY 19: 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.
Poem will go here 🙂
DAY 20: Prompt will go here 🙂
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DAY 21: Prompt will go here 🙂
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DAY 22: Prompt will go here 🙂
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DAY 23: Prompt will go here 🙂
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DAY 24: Prompt will go here 🙂
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DAY 25: Prompt will go here 🙂
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DAY 26: Prompt will go here 🙂
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DAY 27: Prompt will go here 🙂
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DAY 28: Prompt will go here 🙂
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DAY 29: Prompt will go here 🙂
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DAY 30: Prompt will go here 🙂
Poem will go here 🙂
QueerNeuroMathGirl 