This month Women Writing for (a) Change-Bloomington poets are participating in National Poetry Writing Month.  Every day we will offer up a new  poem by a writer in our community.  Check back after 6:00pm for the Prompt of the Day and the selected resulting poem.

And last but not least, now for our final (but still optional) prompt for this year! Taking a leaf from our video resource, I’d like you to try your hand at a minimalist poem. What’s that? Well, a poem that is quite short, and that doesn’t really try to tell a story, but to quickly and simply capture an image or emotion. Haiku are probably the most familiar and traditional form of minimalist poetry, but there are plenty of very short poems out there that do not use the haiku form. There’s even an extreme style of minimalism in the form of one-word and other “highly compressed” poems. You don’t have to go that far, but you might think of your own poem for the day as a form of gesture drawing. Perhaps you might start from a concrete noun with a lot of sensory connotations, like “Butter” or “Sandpaper,” or “Raindrop” and – quickly, lightly – go from there.

Day 30 Minimal poems by all participants

Lauren Bryant

Ending.

Carole Clark

Majestically magical words
Appreciatively humbled

Amy Cornell

At the jail
she buried her face in the lilacs
and said they smelled like rain.

Sweet Cherry Jam by Allison Distler

8 oz of Michigan summer
pressed into a ball jar
dark as coagulated blood

Minimal by Bev Slattery Hartford

Endings
Over
Done for now
But still in my heart
and head
Not gone.

Haiku  (here are 3) by Amy Lifton

Moon streams through windows,
How am I to sleep like this?
Silver in my eyes.