2025 April PAD Challenge: Day 26
For Day 26 of the 2025 April Poem-A-Day Challenge, poets (and other lone wolves) are encouraged to write a hermit crab poem.
We're getting down to the wire on this challenge. And yes, I'm still finishing up judging for the 2024 November PAD Chapbook Challenge (will finish before the month is over).
For today's prompt, write a hermit crab poem. A hermit crab poem is like a hermit crab essay, which is an essay that takes on the form of another type of literature. So a hermit crab poem might be a poem that looks like a to-do list, footnotes, obituary, spam messages, or a message on a postcard.
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 Hermit Crab Poem:
“messages on the dry erase board,” by Robert Lee Brewer
drive boys to school in morning
doctor appointment @ noon
softball practice @ 6pm
write a poem before bed
"Blessed are the peacemakers..."
salami
string cheese
pickles
tomato soup
saltines
call the orthodontist
mow the lawn
In a world full of cats
be a dog. In a land of birds
be a worm. Catch the birds
raining like dogs and cats.
Raining like worlds.
pay credit card bill
cancel subscription
Laugh more
than you cry.
compile a random list
of quotes
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.
