It is April the first and that can mean only one thing… no not the silly practical jokes and false status updates on Facebook but rather the start of the years third Poem A Day challenge NaPoWriMo. This was the first of the Poem A Challenges and as such has a special place in the hearts of us here at team WoPo.

The website has some fantastic stuff on it so check it out. Here on WoPo we will have daily writing challenges and guest bloggers plus general poetry how to.

The challenge for those who are new, is too write a poem a day for 30 days – the whole of April. It was modeled on the novel writing challenge NaNoWriMo.

To get you all started why not use April Fools Day as inspiration. Think about the silly playground pranks and how they sometimes go wrong, make a list of ten jokes and their consequences. Now write a stanza for each bullet point. The poem may want to grow using just one of the jokes – let it. This is the bones of a poem. Let it sit a while and come back to it on a later date. Do not worry about pinning it down into a specific form or rigid structure at this point – that will come with the editing.

Now get writing!