In July and August, the Poetry Instigator is partnering with four awesome national literary journals to bring you four weeks of cool prompts, literary discussions, special features, and more.

Each week, editors from the featured journal will read the poems based on their prompt and choose a winner, who will receive a free year’s subscription to the journal. This challenge is totally free and open to everyone. To get involved, write a poem based on this week’s prompt, and then post your poem on the forum. If you haven’t yet registered for the forum, get your instigation on! Participate for one week, or all four! We hope our challenge leads you to new poems to read and write.

*To be considered for a summer journals challenge prize, you must post your poem to the forum during the week its prompt is posted.*

Schedule

July 20-26: PHOEBE (deadline midnight, July 26)

July 27-August 2: SO TO SPEAK (deadline midnight, August 2)

August 3-August 9: 32 POEMS (deadline midnight, August 9)

August 10-August 16: SMARTISH PACE (deadline midnight, August 16)

WEEK 4: SMARTISH PACE. AUGUST 10-16.

For the final week of the summer challenge, we’re featuring Smartish Pace, a journal of poetry and fiction out of Baltimore. This week the Poetry Instigator will feature discussions and a prompt based on Smartish Pace’s melding of narrative and non-narrative writing.

Post those poems on the forum by the end of the week. Smartish Pace editor Stephen Reichert will read them and select a winner, who will receive a year’s subscription to Smartish Pace.

2.1: Narrative/Non-narrative

Smartish Pace’s aesthetic, it feels to us (Eleanor and Lucy), is narrative AND fragmentary, storyteller-ish and lyric. This week, write a poem that tells a story, but incorporate non-narrative elements into the poem–whether through form, sentence structure, voice, or anything else. We have some narratives possibilities to choose from–or supply your own:

Curtis Blow, the first superstar rapper, just turned 50.

“A Moroccan Oven That’s Open to All”

Lasagna Cat

“Looking for a MAN with a very expensive sports car”

Go folkloric

**The deadline for submitting your Smartish Pace prompted poems for the contest is 12am Monday August 17, 2009 (i.e., the stroke of midnight on Sunday night)

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WEEK 3: 32 POEMS. AUGUST 3-AUGUST 9

The first week of August, we’re featuring 32 Poems, a lean, mean poetry magazine edited by Deborah Ager. This week the Poetry Instigator will feature a prompt from Deborah as well as an interview with her, and discussions and thoughts about, and examples of, the poetry of chance.

Post those poems on the forum by the end of the week. Deborah will read them and select a winner, who will receive a year’s subscription to 32 Poems.

2.0: Poem of Chance

1. Choose six words from the newspaper that you don’t normally use in your poems. The science section of
the New York Times offers up interesting words at times.
2. Write these words on index cards.
3. Write phrases and additional words that interest you on index cards.
4. Shuffle the cards.
5. Deal them out left to right and see what you have.
6. What here, if anything, inspires you?
7. Write a draft based on what you see before you.
8. If you don’t see anything the first time, you can add more words and shuffle and deal again.

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WEEK 2: SO TO SPEAK. JULY 27-AUGUST 2

This week, please welcome So to Speak to the Poetry Instigator! Stay tuned to the Poetry Instigator this week for writing prompts and lively discussion brought to you by the editors of So to Speak and your friends at the Poetry Instigator. From So to Speak’s website: Founded in 1993 by an editorial collective of women MFA candidates at George Mason University, So to Speak has served as a space for feminist writing and art for nearly twelve years. So to Speak publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and visual art that lives up to a high standard of language, form, and meaning. We look for work that addresses issues of significance to women’s lives and movements for women’s equality and are especially interested in pieces that explore issues of race, class, and sexuality in relation to gender.

At the end of the week, So to Speak’s editors will read the poems submitted on the forum in response to the prompt, and choose a winner. The author of the winning poem will receive a year’s subscription to Phoebe. So enough explication… time to get prompted!!!

1.9: Blason

Her goodly eyes lyke Saphyres shining bright,
Her forehead yvory white,
Her cheekes lyke apples which the sun hath rudded,
Her lips lyke cherryes charming men to byte,
Her brest like to a bowle of creame uncrudded,
Her paps lyke lyllies budded,
Her snowie necke lyke to a marble towre;
And all her body like a pallace fayre,
Ascending up, with many a stately stayre,
To honors seat and chastities sweet bowre.

-Spenser, “Epithalamion”

Blason is a Petrarchan tradition in which lovers pick apart their beloveds’ bodies piece by piece to praise each feature separately, usually in a series of metaphors or similes.  This is not a very nice thing to do to a woman.  I like my eyes to stay in their sockets and my lips on my face.  I like my snowy neck between my head and my shoulders.  But, fortunately, we can work with this tradition of dismemberment.

What do you want to pick apart? What good can come of doing this?  What do the pieces reveal about the whole? Write a poem that picks something apart into its separate features.  Examine its pieces one by one.

**The deadline for submitting your So to Speak prompted poems for the contest is 12am Monday August 3, 2009 (i.e., the stroke of midnight on Sunday night)

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WEEK 1: PHOEBE. JULY 20-26

For your writing pleasure, Phoebe and the Poetry Instigator bring you a week of prompts, discussion, debate, interviews, articles, and poems! Phoebe, a literary magazine out of George Mason University, is edited by Moriah Purdy, an MFA student at GMU. Its poetry editor is Collin Phillips, and its readers include Kathy Goodkin and Aubrey Lenahan. You’ll hear from all of them this week! From Phoebe’s website: Phoebe prides itself on supporting up-and-coming writers, whose style, form, voice, and subject matter demonstrate a vigorous appeal to the senses, intellect, and emotions of our readers. We choose our writers because we believe their work succeeds at its goals, whether its goals are to uphold or challenge literary tradition. At the end of the week, Phoebe’s editors will read the poems submitted on the forum in response to the prompt, and choose a winner. The author of the winning poem will receive a year’s subscription to Phoebe. So enough explication… time to get prompted!!!

1.8: Lost in Translation

Phoebe’s special poetry feature for the Spring 2010 issue will be based on translation. We’ll be featuring both traditional translations and alternative methods of translation, such as homophonic translations (where you translate based on the phonetic sound of a word, versus their literal meaning in another language).

Translation, as put in the Oxford English Dictionary, is “Transference; removal or conveyance from one person, place, or condition to another.” What’s interesting about translation is that there is no way to exchange one thing for another exactly. It’s the difference, what is honored, what is conceded, that makes the new version fresh and interesting.

Write a poem where you translate a text from one “condition” to another. This can be a traditional translation, a homophonic translation, or another method of “transference” – interpret this as you like!

The deadline for submitting your poems to the forum for the contest is 12am on Sunday July 26, 2009