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

June | Day 1 Writing Prompt

Posted by Poetry Potion on Tuesday, June 19, 2012 In : June 2012 
 

"When I Was Young!"


(in South Africa, June the 16th is commemorated as Youth Day. Learn more about this day here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soweto_riots)


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Free Freedom by Bandung Poet Mau Mau

Posted by Poetry Potion on Saturday, April 28, 2012 In : Freedom Week 


Free freedom!

Freedom ain't free.

Free freedom ain't freedom

For freedom there's fee.


Sweat or blood

Sweat and blood.

Spill blood to keep it

Even to retrieve it.

Gallons and gallons of sweat

Just to till it.

Free freedom ain't freedom

For freedom there's fee.


Freedom is an illusion

When freedom is limited

Free freedom is limited

Free freedom ain't free


Free freedom!

Freedom ain't free.

Free freedom ain't freedom

For freedom there's fee.


Freedom is a state of mind,

Free your mind from siege 

The body will suffer

If ...


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Day 5 Writing Prompt

Posted by Poetry Potion on Saturday, April 28, 2012 In : Freedom Week 


"Man is condemned to be free"

(Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism)


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A Theory named Sue by Sihle Ntuli

Posted by Poetry Potion on Friday, April 27, 2012 In : Freedom Week 

Entangled in misdirection 
The legs argue with both minds the heart says its piece too.
You lit your heart on fire called it passion and she couldn’t match.
You watched as your words ate themselves alive mass suicide
You could only be silent while Sue lies about her side.
Truth is Sue’s the bitch that made you strip took your suit and called it Law. 
A Lovers Law called it emotional honesty.
When she left she got a chair,left you stood up 
Tied your tongue in a knot to the ceiling fan
Locked the d...

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a name by zamantungwa

Posted by Poetry Potion on Friday, April 27, 2012 In : Freedom Week 

she has seen the
moon set and the sun rise
she has written int he stars
the names of all her children

a name for the unborn
a name for each beating
a name for each raping
a name for all silence

a billion names for every
tear she has cried
for each of the misunderstood
she has a name

a name for each victim
blamed, hated and trapped
a name for every name calling
a name for all the scars

this morning she saw
the sun rise but the moon lingered
every tear she shed had 
a grain of sand as companion

so she named each g...
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