2025 April PAD Challenge: Day 9
For day 9 of the 2025 April Poem-A-Day Challenge, writers from around the world are tasked with writing an ekphrastic poem.
For today's prompt, write an ekphrastic poem. An ekphrastic poem is a poem inspired by another piece of art, whether that's a painting, photograph, sculpture, mixed media, or some other medium. You can choose your own piece of art to inspire your poem today. Or you can use one of the pieces at the following links:
- Big Old Clap Clap, by Lee Ellis
- Long Walk Home, by Nicki Fitz-Gerald
- Abstract with Twirling Sparklers, by Darin Rogers
- Unwavering, by Martin Klein
- Resolution Kid, by Yinka Shonibare
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 an Ekphrastic Poem:
“Looking Deep Into You I Wonder,” by Robert Lee Brewer
What am I but flesh & blood
& paint & dreams & mysteries
locked within mysteries locked
within dreams turning to smoke
& raining down upon myself
evaporating for I am a world
& galaxy & universe & multi-
faceted multiverse of chaos
& confusion & illusion & still
I don't know everything I know
I don't know but wish I did
because in the end what am I
without you putting meaning
to everything I mean to create
& everything I mean to love
& still it is never ever enough.
(Note on my poem today: I decided to use "Big Old Clap Clap," by Lee Ellis, as my starting point for this one.)
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.
