July Poetry Prompt Calendar

“If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.” — Muriel Rukeyser

I can’t put into words how cool it’s been for me for these prompts to be so well received.

I’ve been writing prompt calendars since December and in that time, I’ve met strangers at parties, workshops, and grocery stores telling me stories about bringing these prompts to dinner parties, beginning and ending their days with them, starting a writing practice for the first time in their lives or returning to one after a long time, and writing daily on through hikes. Most recently, someone shared in a comment that the prompts have felt supportive while navigating postpartum.

I mean, what could I possibly say? You’re all incredible, to be so heart-open and available to let a practice move you and move through you.

Whether you’re a lifelong, seasoned writer or a novice or a self-proclaimed nonwriter, you are so welcome here and I’m so excited that you are here.

These prompts are daily suggestions. The experience is different if you commit to a 31-day practice, but life happens and routines are hard to change and all of that. This is an exploratory, perfection-free space. My invitation is for you to just be with what comes.

If you’re interested in studying poetry and/or writing more formally and/or writing with a group, Hugo House, The Writers Center, Brooklyn Poets, GrubStreet, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Writing Workshops, Writers.com, and McCormack Writing Center offer a lot of great workshops. If you’re wanting to learn about poets, I couldn’t recommend Emily Sernaker enough. She offers fabulous multi-week deep dive class studies.

As always, good luck, godspeed, and go with it. See you on the other side.

1. Read “Yes It Will Rain (or Prayer for Our First Home)” by Patrick Rosal. Write a poem that feels like a gift for somebody. In this poem, Rosal is writing to and for his wife, Mary Rose. Dedicate your poem to someone. Bonus points if it plays with spaciousness/white space on the page like this one does.

2. Read “Don’t Let That Horse…” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Think of an idiom like “no strings attached” and try to create a silly, sort of fable-like poem around it. You might use this list to help you find one.

3. Write a poem that includes these words: miracle, story, aftergrowth, key, creature, and coral.

4. Read “Poem for July 4, 1994” by Sonia Sanchez. Write a “Poem for July 4, 2026”. Add the epigraph, “after Sonia Sanchez”.

5. There’s a weird little poem called a “prime 53” poem. It has tricky rules: 53 syllables total, 11 lines, 4 stanzas (3, 3, 3, 2), and a rhyme scheme (aba cdc efe gg). The syllable structure in the first 3 stanzas is 7 / 5 / 3 and in the final couplet it’s 5 / 3. A press called Press 53 hosts a free contest every summer that ends July 31st and they challenge people to write these weird little poems and submit them. Try writing a prime 53 poem. Bonus points if you’re brave and you submit it to the contest. You’ll have to make a Submittable account if you don’t already have one, I think, in order to submit.

6. Read “Crater Heart” by Tennessee Hill. Write a 55-word poem.

7. This 4th-6th grade lesson plan from The Metropolitan Opera defines a musical aria as “a song for solo voice that is typically a moment of reflection or emotional expression”. There is much overlap between musical compositions and poetic/lyric compositions, so we can assume the poetic aria follows a similar definition. Write an aria that is reflective and emotional in nature. Read “Nature Aria” by Yi Lei (tr. Tracy K. Smith & Changtai Bi) and use the lines “Scatter in me the seeds/Of a thousand saplings” in the poem. Add the epigraph, “with lines borrowed from Yi Lei”.

8. Read “…Fox!” by Douglas Kearney. Write a poem that is narratively as close as possible to your own inner monologue while it’s in the middle of something. Interrupt yourself.

9. Read “Today” by Victoria Chang. Write a poem as a series of journal entries all in a row. It doesn’t need to be as long as Chang’s, just give it a try. Let the entries lead you somewhere. Date them. Add the epigraph, “after Victoria Chang”.

10. Read “Raucous Prayer” by Patrick Rosal. Write a poem filled with sound. Call it a prayer, either in the title or within the poem.

11. Read “An Essay on Loss” by Aria Aber. Read it again. Choose a subject and write a poem titled “An Essay on [your subject]”. Add the epigraph, “after Aria Aber”.

12. Maybe set a little bit of extra time aside for this one. Read “Forsythe Avenue Haibun” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil and “Equinox” by Leah Umansky. Read Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s essay on the haibun. Try to write a haibun.

13. Read “‘Faith’ is a fine invention (202)” by Emily Dickinson. Write a poem that’s just one quatrain (a set of four lines) in length. The first two lines should be a statement of some kind. Begin the third line with the word “but”.

14. Choose a specific fish—a goldfish, an alewife, a sturgeon, a rainbow trout etc. Write a poem about that fish. Make the name of that fish your title. Never mention the fish in the poem.

15. Read “Poem for Passengers” by Matthew Zapruder. Write a poem with no punctuation.

16. Read “Poem for the Black Bird” by Alina Stefanescu. Pick an animal and write a poem titled “Poem for [your animal]”.

17. Write a poem that begins with the line, “If my hand had been an arrow…”.

18. Write a poem that includes these words: pelt, settle, simmer, melancholy, spirit, and take.

19. Read “In a Room at the Marriott Marquis” by Myra Shapiro. Write a poem that ends with an exclamation. Bonus points if it contains parentheses, too.

20. Read “Naïve” by Tim Seibles. Write a poem in couplets (lines in sets of twos) except for just two singular lines.

21. Think of a scientific fact you like, or some sort of hard science verbiage that’s on your radar. Nikky Finney uses blood as her vehicle in “The Inflammation”. Find your vehicle. The healing process of an injury? A disease? Hair growth? Write a poem that uses proper nouns, specific details, and a scientific anchor as its way through.

22. Read three poems. Read them again. Write. This is a prompt taught to me by the poet Fran Quinn (if this isn’t your first time following along with me, you’ll know this prompt). He says to allow the thing that comes alive between all three poems to be channeled into your own poem, which becomes the fourth poem. Here are three poems for your consideration: “Crisscross” by Arthur Sze, “Cherry blossoms” by Toi Derricotte, and “I Have this Way of Being” by Jamaal May.

23. Read “Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo. Read it again. Write a poem with long lines.

24. Read “The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke” by David Lehman. Write a poem that heavily relies on semicolons ( ; ).

25. Read “The Vital Question” by Martha Silano. Some overlap with #15 and #20 here: write a poem in couplets with no punctuation. Use white space and syntax as your punctuation the way Silano does.

26. Go to thesaurus.com. Type in the first word that comes to your mind. Choose a synonym for that word. Do the same for another word. Type in “regret”. Choose a synonym. Type in “well”. Choose a synonym. Write a short poem incorporating those four words.

27. Read “All Trains Are Going Local” by Timothy Liu. Write a poem with a swear word in it.

28. Read “At the end of the world, you tell me about the bees” by Muriel Leung. Write a poem that begins with a question. Bonus points if it has a long title.

29. The golden shovel form was created by the poet Terrance Hayes as a way to pay homage to the poets and poems we love. “A golden shovel borrows a line from the existing poem and uses each word from that line as the last word of each line in a new poem.” Read “The Golden Shovel” by Terrance Hayes. Some other examples: “[The whale already]” by Kimiko Hahn and “Wait Until It Grows Roots” by Tarfia Faizullah. Choose a line from a poem you admired among this month’s prompts and write a golden shovel.

30. Write a poem that includes these words: June, plume, pinnacle, window, jury, and oak.

31. Write a poem titled “But Not Anymore”.

• Poem for My Neighbor Whose Good Intentions Are Wolf Pelt by Jacqueline Allen Trimble

• Letters Found Near a Suicide by Frank Horne

• Driving Around by Steve Scafidi

• In a Beautiful Country by Kevin Prufer

• Bildungssonnet by Billy-Ray Belcourt

• Grief #213 by Saeed Jones

• How Damage Can Lead to Poetry by Kelli Russell Agodon

I don’t ever want to gatekeep what I share in my Substack, but these postings do take time to compile—sometimes quite a bit of time—so I decided that this may be a good alternative: if you would like to “tip” me for any of the time it took to write this, if you felt moved or supported by it, you can buy me a coffee <3

I’ve also very recently turned on paid subscriptions because you people with your sweet, generous hearts were pledging paid memberships even though there is no paywall! So, a recurring $5 donation is also an option.