The Best from the Weekly Prompts
For years, we’ve been offering a prompt at the end of every Rattlecast episode, to encourage folks to write new poems for the next week’s open lines. At the end of every episode, Timothy Green announced the next week’s prompt. Write yours within the next week to share it on the open lines, and submit it to this category by the end of the month to have it considered. Series editor Katie Dozier will select her favorite poems, which will be published as one of Rattle.com’s daily poems. The winner each month will also receive $100.
Submissions for the Prompt Poem of the Month are not anonymized—we still want to encourage everyone to share their weekly poems on the Rattlecast’s open lines—but choices are still being made solely based on the poem’s merit. Submit as many poems as you’d like to this category, but only poems written for the current month’s prompts. A winner will be chosen after the first week of every month.
Find a list of our past prompts here.
Current Prompts
February 9th (can’t submit until later in February!): Write an elegy that’s not about a person.
February 2nd (can’t submit until later in February!): Write a poem that explores the perspective of the other side, and arrives somewhere opposite to where the poem begins.
January 26th: Write a poem with a title that begins with “Poem in Which I” after Denise Duhamel. For the next word in the title, find a random verb on randomwordgenerator.com.
January 19th: Think of a word that transports you back to childhood, and give the poem that title.
January 12th: Write a poem in which something is overfilled. Include as many tactile details as possible.
January 5th: Write a pantoum that references your favorite shape.
Monthly Winners
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Jared Campbell | Injustice (December 2024) |
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Kelly Bennett | All the Fixings (November 2024) |
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Hemat Malak | Smoking Ceremony (October 2024) |
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Katie Beswick | Ruderal (September 2024) |
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Mike Bayles | Abyss (August 2024) |
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Jaymee Thomas | Voice Lessons (July 2024) |
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Dick Westheimer | Where Does a Person with Aphantasia … (June 2024) |
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Suzanne Lummis & Ron Koertge | Picnic (May 2024) |
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James Washington Jr. | Credit (Apr. 2024) |
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Nancy Beagle | The Wedding Doll (Mar. 2024) |
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Kelly Sargent | The ‘L’ Word (Feb. 2024) |
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Lynne Knight | Body Talk (Jan. 2024) |
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Cindy Guentherman | About Those Apples (Dec. 2023) |
J.B. Penname | The End of Hurt Is Not Healing (Nov. 2023) | |
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Tammy Greenwood | The Accordian (Oct. 2023) |
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Farah Ali | White Rabbit (Sep. 2023) |
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Sharon Ferrante | Six Senryu from the Kitchen (Aug. 2023) |