2009 Poem-A-Day Challenge

Refrigerator Door Poem Stonehenge by Sister72

April is National Poetry Month, so it’s a perfect opportunity to live up to my URL and flashback to the late 90s when I worked at The Academy of American Poets and was terrorizing the NYC poetry slam scene!

I’ve attempted National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) twice, cranking out 15,000 words on the second try, but tomorrow, for the first time ever, I’ll be participating in the Poem-A-Day (PAD) Challenge!

The inimitable Robert Brewer — editor of Writer’s Market and Poet’s Market, and proprietor of the wonderful blog, Poetic Asides — will be posting a daily prompt and I, along with at least 150 others (and counting), are commiting to write a poem inspired by that prompt.

Every. Day.

Doesn’t mean any of them will be good, but every day in the month of April, before the clock strikes midnight, I’ll be posting a new poem here and over at Poetic Asides.

This year, Robert has added an extra bit of inspiration to the Challenge, commiting to publish the 50 “best” poems — one selected from each day’s entries and 20 wild cards — as a free ebook that he will make available to all via Poetic Asides. The daily bests will be selected from a Top 5 he selects by an impressively varied line-up of judges, including Dorianne Laux, Vince Gotera, Mark Doty, Patricia Smith and…

ME!

Full rules and info can be found here.

The first prompt will go up sometime after midnight tonight (not sure if he’s automating the posts or not) and then the fun begins!

I haven’t written a new poem in over a year, since the Evel Knievel poem.

I challenge all the poets I know to step up and join me!

About Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez works in publishing by day, world domination by night. Over the years he’s lived in Staten Island and South Beach Miami; served in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, US Army, and Dennis Kucinich’s ‘04 Presidential Campaign; won poetry slams, founded a reading series, co-authored a book of poetry, and self-published another; prefers Pumpkin and India Pale Ales, Buffalo Trace and Four Roses Bourbons, and Dona Paula Shiraz Malbec. He’s a devout Mets fan from the Bronx now living in New Jersey, and has a beautiful wife and two amazing kids.

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