The now annual April Poetry Month Challenge has started over at Robert Lee Brewer’s Poetic Asides. Basically, he gives a prompt every day and you churn out a poem. I’ve had several friends do this (and I sort of half did it once, lol)…one of them has had several poems published now. It’s a great way to get a body of poems to work on without a lot of judgment on your part…how much time do you really have to agonize over a poem if you are generating one a day? Plus it’s just a fun community to be a part of. Let me know here if you are doing it…I’m considering it, but I’ve got a Computers in Libraries presentation coming up on the 12th and my creative energy might be tapped out working on it.

Poets & Writers Magazine has come up with a database of writing contests that have been vetted and somehow proved legitimate. Even if you don’t win anything, isn’t it nice to have the motivation of a deadline?

Another motivator is Robert Brewer, who is the editor of Writer’s Market and Poet’s Market, as well as the online editor of WritersMarket.com. He does prompts for poets every Wednesday from his blog, Poetic Asides. Today’s prompt is “about finding something that doesn’t belong where it is.” You can also join his page on Facebook to follow the prompts and get great poetry news. He has recently started a meme on Twitter with the hashtag #poettues for conversations about poetry (I think they were meant to be exclusively on Tuesdays, but who knows what will happen). You can follow the conversation on Twitter, even if you don’t have an account.