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

Tribute by Su

Posted by Poetry Potion on Friday, August 19, 2011 In : Don Mattera Week 

In a land
Grown cold
With weeping
He ignited
Hope
 
While dignity
Lay almost a corpse
He buried
Subservience
 
They cut 
Him down
They tried
To extinguish
His message
 
Hatred failed
Lies recoiled
Brutality was ashamed
 
For we buried
His body
Yet they failed
To quell
The raging
Bonfire
Of his soul…

 
© Su

day 4 | 18 August 2011

Continue reading...
 

Imprisoned by sadness by Noni

Posted by Poetry Potion on Friday, August 19, 2011 In : Don Mattera Week 

I feel an eruption of emotion subtly teasing
As I flutter at the moisture flirting with my eyes
I'm marred by a sadness devoid of meaning

I frantically explore archives of memory
Obliviously staring into unoccupied space
I struggle to find the seed that's given birth to this 

This conception of sadness...
Could it be the disappointment of unmet expectation?
Or the naive spirit lacking compassion ?

Thrusted into a pool of emotions, 
The domestic distractions momentarily dissolve the pounding in my chest...
Continue reading...
 

Victory's Warning by Su

Posted by Poetry Potion on Thursday, August 18, 2011 In : Don Mattera Week 

Rejoicing!
He gathered us near
Stay awake Children
 
If you cease to walk by day
Let your light shine by night
Or else you may stumble 
And fall from lofty heights
For today’s hero
Is tomorrow’s enemy
 
For the enemy is you
The enemy is me
When we let 
Lack of truth
Impugn our sight
Yet, sleep now
For tomorrow
Brings new light

© Su

day 3 | 17 August 2011

Continue reading...
 

solar redemption by Bulumko Nyamezele

Posted by Poetry Potion on Thursday, August 18, 2011 In : Don Mattera Week 

the sun sets the platform
where a pantomime of omnipresent ideas
conquer life's desolate stages...

sunset pauses the pursuit of desires
and pages time towards the climax of fantasies and after-shock of nightmares...

freedom rides sun rays,
dances with noon
and patiently waits to free us
when we enslave ourselves
in night cells.

selling our souls
with hopes of being used
for what we think we're worth
and not the values that make us look unworthy.

the sun sets reality in motion,
evokes our memories
and thr...
Continue reading...
 

Freedom walks in the sunrise by Reitumetse Johnson

Posted by Poetry Potion on Thursday, August 18, 2011 In : Don Mattera Week 

We heard the bugle
Sounding afar
Ferreting through the doom and dust
Into the great ritual rivers
and murmur mountains.
howling at the bleeding moon
which bleeds from wombs and tubes
of white nights in the barrenness of June.
Even so
We heard it coming closer and closer,
Towards the ear of God,
Our faith conceived in utter darkness,
loyal to the sobering night,
of kisses as many as the stars,
We loved and made love,
My hand traversed the limber thigh
Of a dark continent,
I felt the first light,
Heard th...
Continue reading...
 
 

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