Archive for the ‘Resources’ Category:
Written on February 4th, 2026 by adminno shouts
Response writing is an wonderful way to get yourself writing, and can have an immediacy about it that other types of writing do not. However the most common way to do this form of writing has historically been to read the newspaper or look at news headlines and write from them. This style of writing goes back to literary greats like Jules Vern but some people might struggle with this style of information and inspiration gathering as news stories can be a little harrowing and even triggering for some. So what to do?
The answer can lay in special interest groups and mailing lists. Many specalist publications like Nature have mailing lists that were orginally designed for journalists but now are often news drops for the interested general public. You can often sign up to these for free and though the free versions do not give you the whole articles to read they do give you summaries and titles which can be used to do further research and to write from. Also if it is a subject you are interested in you might want to get that paid subscription anyway. I personally prefer reading the whole article and then doing research around that but it’s fine to just look at headline or article title and think “what else could that mean?” and start writing from there.
Within education this is known as Magpying and is not considered stealing or a copyright issue in most instances but laws, especially around digital stuff, are often changed and also vary wildly from country to country so checking up on your current local laws can be a good idea.
Another good source are special interest groups like fungi, brutalist archecture, football cards etc… these are often found on platforms like Facebook or specialist blogs and are full of photos and little stories about local history aspects which can often lead you on a research adventure of your very own – do not take peoples photos to publish next to your poems without getting the correct permissions, and as these are not professional publications it is considered nice to ask if people are happy for you to write from the images, but in many countries it is not a legal requirement. Be mindful not to be a creep and only go with publically shared non-personal photos ie trees, fancy cars, landscapes. Camera clubs are normally happy to work with writers if you talk to them first.
There is also the rise of positive news mailing lists and sites that often use platforms such as substack and mastodon.
Of course we here at WoPo also endeavour to supply images and snippets to do response writing exercises with on a regular basis which can be found here.
Written on March 22nd, 2025 by adminno shouts
Prompts are a valuable way to get you writing – they may not produce the poems or stories that you are looking for but they are a good way of training that writing “muscle” so we have collated a list of sites that give poetry writing prompts and hope you find it useful – if you know of any others please let us know!
1) https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/poetry/
2) https://jerichowriters.com/100-poetry-prompts/
3) https://poetryinvoice.ca/write/writing-prompts
4) https://www.pspoets.com/blog/30daypoetrychallenge
5) https://www.writersdigest.com/be-inspired/poetry-prompts
Written on January 21st, 2025 by adminno shouts
Events – obviously there are local, national and international events as well as physical and online – here we focus on the events that can be at least appreciated online! If you know of one we have not listed then please get in touch.
1) World Poetry Writing Month – this is us! We run a poem a day writing challenge every February. We also have an insta as well as a FB group etc…
2) World Poetry Day is the 21st of March.
3) National Story Telling Week starts on the 1st of Feb till the 9th of Feb. There are normally lovely local events on for this one though you might have to join your local story telling group or society, or maybe a national version to find out all that is going on. Many poems are actually narratives or stories and bards would have used various poetic techniques to remember their tales.
4) World Book Day is on the 6th of March and is for families. Their website includes various activity ideas and is worth checking out!
5) National Poetry Writing Month is a poem a day challenge that occurs in April each year.
6) National Poetry Day is in October and is UK based.
Written on March 7th, 2019 by adminno shouts
Its been a week since the the poem a day writing challenge finished and for some people this can be a restless time – so what should you be doing?
A good place to start is writing magazines, forums and various Facebook groups etc… collect places to submit your work too, look through them and write down the ones with the most pressing deadlines. Now set yourself the target of submitting some of your work. These can be pre-existing poems or ones you have written during the challenge.
If you feel your work is not ready to submit for publication then you can use the time instead to spell check and edit the work.
The Writers and Artists Year Book can be a good place to start though bare in mind that the publication for the next year becomes available in the summer so you may want to wait for the most up to date info on who to send your work too.
On top of that there are plenty more poem writing challenges and celebrations to get your teeth into if you have the writing bug!
Written on April 9th, 2017 by adminno shouts
Escape Into Life a group that features emerging art and literature has a group on flickr has some amazing visuals which are an ecclectic mix guarenteed to get your creative juices flowing. Flickr and other photo/image sharing platforms are brilliant resources for writers.
Link to the photo pool is here.
Written on January 2nd, 2015 by adminno shouts
There are some amazing pictures and concepts to be found on the site Pinterest, so we have set up a WoPo Inspired board which you can scroll through to find ideas or a mood or a feeling for your poetry.