Marilyn Letts

NaPoWriMo prompt: “ Try your hand today at writing your own poem about a remembered, cherished landscape. It could be your grandmother’s backyard, your schoolyard basketball court, or a tiny strip of woods near the railroad tracks. At some point in the poem, include language or phrasing that would be unusual in normal, spoken speech – like a rhyme, or syntax that feels old-fashioned or high-toned.” No time for original content today. Instead, I edited an old poem that has a l

NaPoWriMo prompt: “ Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem that recounts a memory of a beloved relative, and something they did that echoes through your thoughts today.”   The difficulty with this prompt is to try to give a flavour of my uncle in one poem. This is not worthy, but it’s a first draft.   Understated Style   Uncle Alec always wears a smile, and if a formal occasion, a bow tie.   If I ask how he is, he deftly turns the conversation, head tilted

NaPoWriMo prompt: “ Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own erasure/blackout poem. You could use a page from a favorite book, a magazine, what have you. It can be especially fun to play with a book you don’t know, particularly one that deals with an unfamiliar topic. If you’d like to go that route, maybe you’ll find something of interest in the thousands of scanned books  at the Internet Archive? Feel free to maintain the whitespace of the original text (as is tr

NaPoWriMo prompt for today: “ In his poem, “Goodbye,” Geoffrey Brock describes grief in three short stanzas, the second of which is entirely made up of a rhetorical dialogue. Today, write your own meditation on grief. Try using Brock’s form as the “container” for your poem: a few short stanzas, with a middle section in which a question is repeated with different answers given.”   Wrestling with grief didn’t feel like something I wanted to do today, but apparently my inner cr

NaPoWriMo prompt for today:   “Marianne Moore was a well-known modernist poet, with a curious taste in hats. Though she wrote on many themes, I’ve always had some affection for her many poems about – or in the voice of – animals, such as “The Fish,” “Dock Rats,” “The Pangolin,” and “No Swan so Fine.” Today, try writing your own poem in the voice of an animal or plant, or a poem that describes a specific animal or plant with references to historical events or scientific facts

NaPoWriMo prompt for the day: “ In his poem, “Poet, No Thanks,” Jean D’Amérique repeats the phrase “I wasn’t a poet” multiple times, while describing other things that he instead claims to have been. In your poem for today, use a simple phrase repeatedly, and then make statements that invert or contradict that phrase.” This poem started out epic (the whole aquarium). The constraint of time reigned me in to only one salamander. One of the things I love about NaPoWriMo is the

Thanks to NaPoWriMo “ here’s today’s prompt — optional, as always. In her poem, “Front Yard Rhyme,” Cecily Parks evokes the sing-songy beats that accompany girls’ clapping games, and jump-rope and skipping rhymes. Today, we challenge you to write your own poem that emulates these songs – something to snap, clap, and jump around to. ” I could keep this up all day. Might expand this in the future, but for today, here’s what I’ve got. And if you want to see the other 100 specie

NaPoWriMo prompt: " This one takes its inspiration from Yentl van Stokkum’s poem, “It’s the Warmest Summer on Record Babe,” which blends casual, almost blasé phrasing with surreal events like getting advice from a bumblebee. In your poem today, try writing with a breezy, conversational tone, while including at least one thing that could only happen in a dream." Late to the poetry world today, but lots of fun fulfilling the prompt. Some conversations are like this, honest. Cu

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “The Roman poet Catullus wrote a famous two-line poem: Odi et amo: quare id faciam fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. Here’s an English translation.                   I hate and I love. Why do I do this, you ask?                 I don’t know, but I feel it happening and am tortured.   I thought about this poem the other day when I read a social media post collecting sentences from Charles Darwin’s letters, including:          

Day 4 Rocky Mountain Spring   NaPoWriMo prompt: “In his poem, “ Spring Thunder ,” Mark van Doren brings us a short, haunting evocation of weather and the change in seasons. Today, we’d like to challenge you to craft your own short poem that involves a weather phenomenon and some aspect of the season. Try using rhyme and keeping your lines of roughly even length.”   Pooh Bear wrote the perfect poem for the weather in my part of the world right now, but here’s my attempt.   Ro

NaPoWriMo’s prompt: “Today, we challenge you to write a poem in which a profession or vocation is described differently than it typically is considered to be. Perhaps your poem will feature a very relaxed brain surgeon, or a farmer that hates vegetables. Or maybe you have a poetical alter-ego of your own, who flies a non-wan, treasure-hunting flag with pride.”   The poem and prompt brought me to thinking what if….     Assigning Value   Negotiations begin when the checkout cle

One of the things I love about participating in NaPoWriMo is waking up to some new inspiring art. The prompt: “Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.” How have I never read Dover Beach  by Matthew Arnold and Pittsylvania County  by Ellen Bryant Voigt?   Important Work   It must have been a Sa

NaPoWriMo National (Global) Writing Month begins with a prompt to write a Tanka. Here are two Tankas expressing my joy on beginning this April 2026's challenge of writing a poem a day. (Of course I was too excited to write only one.) Tanka 1 Let me make myself clear, like jello shots, neon green, poetry downed. Loosen up those taut muscles, metaphors waiting to flex. Tanka 2 Penguins aren’t big on privacy; neighbour’s shoulders share survival heat. Antarctic treaty survives

April in Calgary may mean more snowfall before we see daffodils, but creativity will be springing! For the last couple years I have accepted the challenge of National (Global) Poetry Writing Month to write a poem each day. NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) is a website run by a generous poetry wizard named Maureen Thorson. Each day she provides a prompt and poets around the world attempt to write a poem in response. It's like a worldwide recess time where we all ru

Last year I attended for the first time while having a lot of persistent concussion symptoms. This year I might be able to stay awake past 9 pm!

Here are the poets at the JLRB Press virtual book launch of Becoming: An Anthology of What-if Poems About Women and Womanhood January 31. Pictured in this screen shot are editors Lucia M. Polis, Terri Gower, and Katie Cowger and contributors Kath Healing, Nancy Takacs and myself. Spectacular to hear poetry read by the poets and get to meet everyone online. Thank you to so many friends for attending! (My sister Ruth and friend Margaret won books!) As I said in my acknowledgeme

Becoming - An Anthology of What-If Poems about Women and Womanhood contains three of my poems: A Life in Pap Smears Doilies May Deceive You Thorns I'm looking forward to reading a couple of them at the virtual launch Jan 31. Hope to see you there!

I'm looking forward to going to Monstress! ( On at Vertigo Theatre from January 17 to February 15.) The story asks, "Can saving another soul save your own?" As someone who used to think saving souls was her job, I have thoughts about this question already. There's an interview on CTV with our particular favourite star, Sydney Williams at the 3 minute mark. The Edmonton Journal praised the play's premiere last year as a "haunting, gothic thriller." Can't wait to see this new

Becoming - an anthology, will be released on January 12, 2026. Right now I'm honored to have my poem Doilies May Deceive You on the JLRB press website advertising the anthology. Thanks so much Katie, Terri and Lucía! For my cohort in The Writer's Studio at SFU the other poem you will be excited to see in print - after all your wise workshopping - is A Life in Pap Smears. Look forward to attending a virtual book launch in January. Image courtesy of JLRB Press. Used with perm

October 25 I got to attend The Vancouver Writers Festival with my two sisters and poet Jessica Lee McMillan. We listened to a truly "awe-inspiring lineup of poets—Guest Curator Canisia Lubrin ,  Billy-Ray Belcourt ,  Junie Désil ,  Cecily Nicholson ,  Danez Smith ,  Karen Solie , and  Paul Vermeersch —as they read and reflect on a secret question drawn from a bag on-stage and posed, one poet to the next, in a carousel-style reading and fireside-style chat." I already knew and