2024 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 24
For the 2024 November PAD Chapbook Challenge, poets are tasked with writing a poem a day in the month of November before assembling a chapbook manuscript in the month of December. Day 24 is to write a “If You (blank)” poem.
For today’s prompt, take the phrase "If You (blank)," replace the blank with a new word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles might include: "If You Leave," "If You Think That's Scary," "If You Don't, You'll Regret It," and/or "If You Have Trouble Writing a Poem."
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 hundreds of 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 If You Blank Poem:
“if you've forgotten,” by Robert Lee Brewer
if you've forgotten that quiet cove
i would call it no lesser love
because i've found that love is true
even when it's just pour vous
& i felt something not that small
compress my insides to a ball
that i could bounce across the floor
until all thoughts that came before
dissolved into a million rays
of energy i burned for days
as if i had become the sun
shining light on everyone
until i melt down to my core
& dimly glow forever more
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.
