About the Challenge

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity" ~ William Wordsworth

A Poem A Day Challenge is a week-long (5 days) challenge that runs every third week of the month.

Participants receive writing prompts, daily, for which they write and submit a poem by 10 pm on the same day.

The best THREE (3) poems are selected and published the next morning.

TO PARTICIPATE: enter your email address here http://eepurl.com/eQCM6 and you will receive a daily prompt.

RULES OF THE CHALLENGE:

  • you have to sign up to receive the writing prompts
  • you have to write a new poem for the writing prompt and submitting by 10pm on the same day
  • you may not submit a poem you have already written before.

CHALLENGE PRIZE: From August we are offering a prize for the best overall poem. More info on the prize and how this is decided will follow.

QUARTERLY PRINT EDITION: Poems selected for the publication will be compiled for a quarterly print edition of A Poem A Day challenge. More info on this will follow.

submit here or here make sure to include the words:  APOEMADAY at the top of your submission


April: Freedom Week

When Common asks Assata Shakur 'what is freedom?' at the end of his tribute song, Song of Assata. Assata responds, "You're asking me about freedom? i know a whole lot more about what freedom isn't... coz i've never been free." She goes on to imagine what freedom could be.

It's Freedom Week in South Africa, that historical first vote for the oppressed Afrikan masses of South Africa happened eighteen years ago on 27 April. Now let's writer great poems, interrogate, question, image, dream about freedom.

peace

zamantungwa
editor, publisher

A Poem A Day Challenge, Every 3rd Week of the month

Poems

Day 2 Writing Prompt | 15 November 2011

Posted by Poetry Potion on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 In : Soweto Poets 

(Soweto Poets Week)

"the fear-filled flutter of her heart"
(from 'the face of my mother takes the shape' by James Matthews)
the full poem is below...

DEADLINE: 11:59M, 13 NOV

 
the face of my mother takes the shape by James Matthews
 
the face of my mother takes the shape of
a frightened mouse
at the sound of a policeman's step
the fear-filled flutter of her heart
a bird ensnared
my father freezes his feelings at the demand
for a pass
and i watch the fire in his
eyes slowly die
as his hands grope for...
Continue reading...
 

My Footprint by Thabang Moabi

Posted by Poetry Potion on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 In : Soweto Poets 
Fertile soil that feed the vegitation
The green pasture of the livings
A field of mere, severe food chain

I migrate,lured of urban
I leave u behind
To a place that would wound my soul
Not even bleeding

I will be back
Where my umbilical cord has fallen
To tell the scars in my heart and their worth
My footprint will not be removed of wind or rainfall

I will preserve my blood
To run thicker in my veins
And forbid the running water of the urban
A penetration of my skin
For it would ruin its purity 


© Thab...
Continue reading...
 

These colors don't bleed, they just fade. by Alyssa Campbell

Posted by Poetry Potion on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 In : Soweto Poets 
This one was a heavy cycle
It starts with a machine-hard soak
and a gun-wash rinse

Clothes fly, up and down
Filling and emptying suitcases
Goodbye slaps, and welcome back
embraces

All is tense as the room
starts spinning, faster
building up pressure
heading for disaster

But that little lifesaver
The little timer
You could almost set
Your watch by her

She interrupts the final term of the cycle
taking her time with the clothes, seeing, 
that the colors are
not even bleeding.

© Alyssa Campbell
 
Day 1 | 14 November...
Continue reading...
 

No More Traps by Su

Posted by Poetry Potion on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 In : Soweto Poets 
No more traps
To fight to get high
As we mould lines

Tomorrow
We won’t go
Tomorrow
A place we don’t know

Here and now
We fill time
Here and now
We fly
Here and now
We crash
Here and now
We taste death

Man-made
Suicide
Not even bleeding 

© Saurell Boyers

Day 1 | 14 November 2011

short bio: Su is a writer writing. Su is based in Johannesburg, South Africa
Continue reading...
 

Day 1 Writing Prompt - 14 November 2011

Posted by Poetry Potion on Sunday, November 13, 2011 In : Soweto Poets 
(Soweto Poets Week)
 
"not even bleeding"
 
(from For Don M. - Banned by Mongane Serote)

DEADLINE: 11:59PM, 14 November 2011
 
the full poem is below...

For Don M. - Banned by Mongane Serote>

it is a dry white season
dark leaves don't last, their brief lives dry out
and with a broken heart they dive down gently headed for the earth,
not even bleeding.
it is a dry white season brother,
only the trees know the pain as they still stand erect
dry like steel, their branches dry like wire,
indeed, it is a dry whit...


Continue reading...
 
 

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