Today’s prompt (day 30 and the final one of this challenge) is to write a palinode – a poem in which you retract a view or sentiment expressed in an earlier poem. So I have chosen a poem that I wrote earlier this year, based on another prompt where I was to give life advice to…

Today’s prompt: write your own two-part poem that focuses on a food or type of meal. At some point in the poem, describe the food or meal as if it were a specific kind of person. Give the food/meal at least one line of spoken dialogue. I. There’s a lot to be said about the…

(Today’s prompt is to write an index poem.) Heat. Humidity. The smell of tuberose and lilies. Of course roses. In many colours, more roses than ever given while she was alive. Family, friends. Talking. The dead have to be given a send-off. The priest mutters, he is late. The room is full of things to…

The prompt: Write your own poem titled “The _____ of ______ ,” where the first blank is a very particular kind of plant or animal, and the second blank is an abstract noun. The poem should contain at least one simile that plays on double meanings or otherwise doesn’t quite make “sense,” and describe things…

In my father’s office room there is a little girl in grubby clothes  and she will always be there,  laughing and hiding under the table  with the charts and maps and papers with her scabby knees clasped  against her chest  next to the cupboard with a thousand drawers. But in my mother’s room there is…

My father sits up on his bed, the room is dark, the curtains drawn. We all know he is dying The birth-chart is next to him contains the date and time, and I dare not look at it. I look into my page, I do not know how to read the stars. Years have passed,…

“I have lain those beasts to rest,” I declare, pacing by the litchi tree, “the ones snapping at my heels,  begging me to train them… I have set them free.” You take a sip from your glass, “really?”  “I have, I have slain those demons  that were yanking at my chains  banished them from my…

Today’s prompt (day 22) is to find an Emily Dickinson poem – preferably one you’ve never previously read – and take out all the dashes and line breaks. Make it just one big block of prose. Now, rebreak the lines. Add words where you want. Take out some words. Make your own poem out of…

(Today’s prompt is to choose an abstract noun from a given list and then use that as the title for a poem that contains very short lines, and at least one invented word.) How calm  you were the day you died, watching me running  pillar to post getting untied getting  things done,  things that were…

Today’s prompt: Have you ever heard someone wonder what future archaeologists, whether human or from alien civilization, will make of us? Today’s challenge is to answer that question in poetic form, exploring a particular object or place from the point of view of some far-off, future scientist? “This was a beautiful planet, see how it…

For this challenge cast your mind back to your own childhood and write a poem about something that scared you – or used to scare you – and which still haunts you (if only a little bit) today. Bolero does something to me when it plays I am un-Ravelled resting my head upon upon my father’s…

Today’s challenge asks you to write a poem that contains the name of a specific variety of edible plant….  “This karela* is the sweetest,” you used to say Plunging your knife and fork and cutting into the flesh I never could figure how you enjoyed the bitterness  That made us all gag and make funny faces. That…

you had the softest hands, your palms smoothed by years, the lines erased by time. How I held how I held those hands in mine, whispered in your ear that it was okay to let go. Not the suffering, not the pain, nor the hurt we caused each other, none of it matters anymore. I…

Today’s prompt: Think of a person, real or imagined, who has been held out as an example of how to live, But…. As you lie drawing your last breathsThis is not easy to say.Yet it’s better I expressWhat I need to say some day. Mothers are to be looked up toIn Hindi movies, paragons of…

So today is a prompt to parody a famous poem. Of course, I chose the one by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “How do I love thee, let me count the ways?” So here goes: How do I hate you, let me count the ways, Actually hate comes with a breadth and height You cannot. So I…

I love that story Baba used to say A long winded  One  About the cruel mahout  And  His elephant on the run. He chased  The pachyderm Over hills and vales Cities and by-lanes In sun and rain And caught up Finally When  The tusker  tried to escape  down the drain.   Wide-eyed   I’d listen  As…

The poem I was writing died a nasty death it got sucked into listening to what the judge said . The Courtroom was packed, the crowd surged and in the stampede the poem was murdered. It reached out bloodied hands and in it I found A scribbled note telling me I had to go on….

The Hugli today is not the same as yesterday and the water snaking will change soon. The Hugli today water changes by the second yet remains the same, much like a woman. The Hugli today wears a robe of consistency yet her very soul is one of change. The Hugli today is a toddler and…

Today’s prompt is to find a poem in a language you don’t know. Now, read the poem to yourself, thinking about the sound and shape of the words, and the degree to which they remind you of words in your own language. Use those correspondences as the basis for a new poem. The poem I…

For today’s challenge, write a poem in which laughter comes at what might otherwise seem an inappropriate moment – or one that the poem invites the reader to think of as inappropriate. My mother lies dying, I find bits of her scattered  about the house.    The first to go were dentures which she spat…

For today’s prompt I have taken a poem that I love and turned it on its head. The poem is in Bengali by Rabindranath Tagore and I have given a rough translation after my work for reference. There is joy there is birth, the rejoicing of a farewell There’s also unrest, there is pain, hopelessness…