2025 April PAD Challenge: Day 1
Join poets from around the country and the world to write a poem a day in the month of April. Today is the first Two-for-Tuesday prompt.
For the 18th year in a row, it's time to rhyme (or not rhyme, because not all poems rhyme, but I wanted to start off with a rhyme) with the 2025 April Poem-A-Day (or PAD) Challenge. And for this year's challenge, the first prompt of the April PAD Challenge is a "two-for-Tuesday" prompt.
For the first Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
- Write a "Best of Times" poem and/or...
- Write a "Worst of Times" poem.
Yes, because it's the opening prompt of this challenge, I pulled today's prompt from the popular opening of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
Write a poem about the "best of times," "the worst of times," and/or "the everythingest of times."
Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.
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Write a poem every single day of the year with Robert Lee Brewer's Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming. After sharing more than a thousand prompts and prompting thousands of poems for more than a decade, Brewer picked 365 of his favorite poetry prompts here.
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Here’s my attempt at a "The Best of Times" and/or "The Worst of Times" Poem:
“We Could Smell Fires in the Distance,” by Robert Lee Brewer
And, of course, it was a nice walk
past the shops in Pasadena
as we wandered block after block;
and, of course, it was a nice walk,
and, for sure, we had a good talk
as we both laughed like hyenas--
so, of course, it was a nice walk
past those shops in Pasadena.
(Note on my poem today: I used a poetic form for my example poem today, specifically the triolet. If you're interested in trying out various poetic forms, click here to check out a list of more than 100 poetic forms.)
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
