2025 April PAD Challenge: Day 7
Write poems throughout the month April for the 18th annual April Poem-A-Day Challenge. For today’s prompt, write a tense poem.
Wow! We've made it a week into this challenge already. Let's keep the momentum going.
For today's prompt, write a tense poem. It could be past tense, present tense, and/or future tense. Or it could be about a tense feeling. Or the tension in an object (like the strings of a guitar).
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 Tense Poem:
“Release,” by Robert Lee Brewer
There are moments when I can feel myself tighten
as if preparing for something bad to happen,
and I just feel there's nothing good ever in sight
until your smile reminds me we'll both be alright.
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.
