2025 April PAD Challenge: Day 21
Join poets from around the country and the world to write a poem each day of April. For today’s prompt, write a Blank Day poem.
We're now three weeks deep into this challenge; way to bring it. Let's finish strong!
For today's prompt, take the phrase "(blank) Day," replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles might include: "Opposite Day," "Green Day," "Earth Day," "The Last Ever Day," and/or "The Day Before Yesterday." Even "Holiday" would work honestly.
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 (blank) Day Poem:
“I'm Not Sure What to Do Today,” by Robert Lee Brewer
I'm not sure what to do today,
so I'll take it line by line and
word by word, maybe metaphor
my way through another image
or verb a noun. When the tension
tightens, I'll try and relax the
mood by revealing my voice
(as if I have a choice), and then,
I'll relax the mood again with
a bit of well-timed punctuation,
and, by and by, I'll somehow
find line after line dropping
down the left-hand side
of my page or screen or
whatever I find, unsure what
to do, but I'm a train or a tree
with words sprouting from me,
and there's nowhere else
I would be (ready for simile)
on a day like today, because
what else would it be; not
sure today, so I'll just do me.
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.
