2025 April PAD Challenge: Day 14
For Day 14 of the 2025 April Poem-A-Day Challenge, writers around the world are tasked with writing a losing poem.
Whew! We're two weeks in on this month and this challenge already. Go, us!
For today's prompt, write a losing poem. Losing often comes with negative connotations, like losing a game or a family pet or socks (seriously, where do they all disappear to?). However, a person could also lose some weight, bad habits, and/or negativity. Of course, it could be argued these are still negatives (positives via double negatives), but I find I'm starting to lose my train of thought, so it's probably best to get poeming.
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 Losing Poem:
“What I've Gained,” by Robert Lee Brewer
There's nothing I've gained
that I won't eventually lose;
not that I know how, but I
can decipher the clues;
so I don't care much about
all the items I can gain
when I'll eventually lose
and then lose them again:
better I think is to share
all the ups and the downs
with every loser who'll
happily keep me around,
because everything I gain
I will eventually lose,
so abide if you can
to skip having the blues.
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.
