NPM 2026 - Day 2

Welcome to my National Poetry Month project for 2026, where I am playing with poetry by generating poems in playful ways. Today's poem was inspired by MadLibs.

To "MadLib" a poem you take an existing poem and swap out the nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs with your own words, while saving its syntax and punctuation, to create a new poem.

The poem I used was Black Marsh Eclogue by Sam Hamill. My reinvention is a poem about stamp collecting.

Stamp Collecting Dream

Although it’s rare, this canceled stamp

holds faintest history in its careful margins,

those ink-fading-into-brown impressions

spreading across it like rain soaking into dry ground.

It rests in a leather album

more relic than paper, a seasoned traveler

returned from a vanished circulation.

It remembers the paths of letters

and does not shift or speak. But when

at last it’s traded, its fine edges

cross the widening page, and slowly,

as though drifting, slides, almost weightless,

as it draws the collector near.

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2026. All rights reserved.

As a kid who collected stamps, I desperately wanted a set of the 1930 Graf Zeppelins, especially the blue one. 

1930 Graf Zeppelins Image from Mystic Stamp Company. 

Today, a used set will cost you a pretty penny. My mom always did say I had "champagne taste on a beer budget." 

I hope you come back tomorrow to read the new poem I have to share. To see what others are offering up this month, check out  Jama Rattigan's 2026 National Poetry Month Kidlitosphere Events Roundup.

You can check out previous poems in the links below.

April 1 - Paint Chip Poetry Villanelle

NPM 2026 - Day 1

Welcome to my National Poetry Month project for 2026, where I am playing with poetry by generating poems in playful ways. Today's poem was inspired by Paint Chip Poetry.

The directions say to pull a dozen paint chips and flip over a prompt card. Here's what I ended up with.

With the topic of "forever friends," I read through the 12 paint chips and decided to let the words inspire the poem. When I saw Garden of Eden, I immediately wondered if Adam and Eve would have remained friends after the incident in the garden. That's what I wrote about, and because I'm overly ambitious, I wrote a villanelle.

A Villanelle for Adam and Eve

They called each other friends in Eden’s shade
where nothing hid and every fruit was free
there was no hint their trust would ever fade

They laughed at all the easy choices made
till one sly snake said, “Taste and you will see”
they called each other friends in Eden’s shade

One bite, and suddenly the truth would wade
through blame — “Not me, not me! It must be thee!”
there was no hint their trust would ever fade

Their easy bond at once began to jade
their pointing fingers no one could foresee
they called each other friends in Eden’s shade

The garden watched as fault lines were displayed
as laughter soured to brittle irony
there was no hint their trust would ever fade

Expelled, they trudged where once they’d idly played
now less as friends than awkward company
they called each other friends in Eden’s shade
there was no hint their trust would ever fade

The gorgeous tapestry above, called The Garden of Eden, can be found at The Met.

For fun, I also wrote a limerick.

There once were close friends, Eve and Adam,
who wandered God’s bright, blooming garden.
But one fateful bite
turned their laughter to spite—
and trust slipped away as they hardened.

Poems ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2026. All rights reserved.

I hope you come back tomorrow to read the new poem I have to share. To see what others are offering up this month, check out  Jama Rattigan's 2026 National Poetry Month Kidlitosphere Events Roundup.

National Poetry Month 2026 Project

It's that time of year. April begins tomorrow! I've spent the last few weeks thinking about my project for National Poetry Month. In 2025, as my NPM project overlapped with the 100 Day Project, I found myself feeling overwhelmed and pressed for time. Last year I took on the challenge of writing in a new form, an often new-to-me form, every day. This year, I'm going to give myself a bit of grace and open the door to playfulness. There is no theme this year, no specified form, no requirement other than to have fun. To that end, I give you this year's project.

Every poem I write this year will be generated in some playful manner. I'll use metaphor dice and haikubes, select paint chips, fill in a mad lib, use words cut from newspapers and magazines, try out an online poem generator, and give roll-a-poem a try.

I have no idea what the results will be, but my intention is to have fun, keep it light, and enjoy writing. I can't wait to share my poems with you.

If you want to check out my previous National Poetry Month projects, you can find them here.

That's it for now. I'll see you tomorrow for the launch of NPM 2026.

Poetry Sisters Unravel the Ovillejo

 Tanita set this month's challenge to write an ovillejo. Here's a bit of information about this form:

"…the “ovillejo,” an old Spanish verse form that means “tight little bundle.” “-ejo” is one of our blessed diminutives, and “ovillo” means “tangled ball of yarn.” The last line is a “redondilla,” a “little round” that collects all three of the short lines. The rhyme scheme is established, but the meter is at the poet’s discretion, although in Spanish the longer lines tend to be octosyllabic (8 syllables)."

Some sites suggest lines 1, 3, and 5 should ask a question and that lines 2, 4, and 6 answer them. Other sites suggest a pattern of a long line followed by a short line. The best description I found was at the site Astra Poetica.

I tried several of these variations, always beginning with the last line and working backwards. I'm not particularly happy with these and recognize that I need to play a bit more with them, but I do have two drafts to share. 

This first poem uses a favorite line from the poem I wrote last month. The second uses a portion of a Mary Oliver quotation.

A Whale Breaches

Far from the beaches

a whale breaches 

beauty in motion

and the ocean 

fond of sleeping late

forgets its weight

a cargo ship hauls its freight

crew on the bridge navigate by degrees

unseen by creatures beneath the seas

a whale breaches and the ocean forgets its weight

Ovillejo for a Poem

We write our truth and listen to the birds

poems are not words

they're lyrics for the choir

but fires

burn and crackle, too hot to hold 

for the cold

melts in flames of red, and blue, and gold

we speak the truth so every soul is heard

we light the dark so hidden selves are stirred—

poems are not words, but fires for the cold

Poems ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2026. All rights reserved.

You can read the poems my Poetry Sisters have written at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Mary Lee Hahn
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon

Would you like to try the next challenge? Next month, we're writing ekphrastic poems. You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on April 24th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems! 

I hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Marcie Flinchum Atkins. Happy poetry Friday! 

Poetry Sisters Write to an Arthur Sze Poem

This month's challenge was to write a poem inspired by or in conversation with one by our current U.S. Poet Laureate, Arthur Sze. I have to admit I'd never read any of his poetry, so in preparation for our Zoom meeting on Sunday, I spent quite a bit of time reading his work. Once I got deep into his work, I was then faced with the hard decision of choosing just one.

I finally selected the poem "Here." This is how it begins.

Here
by Arthur Sze

Here a snail on a wet leaf shivers and dreams of spring.
Here a green iris in December.
Here the topaz light of the sky.
Here one stops hearing a twig break and listens for deer.

Click here to read the poem in its entirety.

Instead of writing in response to the poem, I chose to use it as a mentor text. I put the lines of the poem on one side of a table, and then wrote lines in a similar style on the other side. I thought about starting my lines with the word "there," but instead went with "when."

Here's my poem, heavily inspired by Here.

When
When a snail grips the cold lip of a leaf and remembers warmth.
When a purple crocus insists on opening in January.
When the sky tilts and spills a thin copper light.
When you stop identifying sounds and listen for what moves between them.
When the craft of the ventriloquist lets silence speak.
When a pocket fills with stolen paper clips.
When the half-truth of an alibi almost believes itself.
When you step into an abandoned church and hear the whispers of a hymn.
When a dream of teeth and fur stills a body.
When a whale breaks the surface and the ocean forgets its weight.
When a motor dies and one oar and persistence are enough.
When tears flow on stage instead of lines.
When prayer becomes a posture rather than a plea.
When a palm holds feathers, shells, pebbles, seeds.
When fear sharpens everything it touches.
When you long for omniscience but find clarity and stillness.
When you live fully in the world.

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2026. All rights reserved.

You can read the poems my Poetry Sisters have written at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Mary Lee Hahn
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon

Would you like to try the next challenge? We're tackling the poetic form of the ovillejo. You can learn more about this form at Writer's Digest. You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on March 27th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems! 

I hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche. Happy poetry Friday! 

Poetry Sisters Write TriCubes

Phillip Larrea is an American poet and syndicated columnist. He invented a poetic form he calls TriCubes. Tricubes are poems composed of three stanzas, each containing three lines of three syllables. This was the form my poetry sisters and I took on as this month's challenge.

This year, we have no theme to hang our poems on, so we are free to write on any topic. I began by drafting poems related to the lunar new year. Then I turned to the snow, my dog, and baking. The biggest hurdle in writing these poems was making them sound and feel poetic. Three-syllable lines are a challenge. I liked what some of the drafts were trying to do, but they felt choppy and unfinished. I finally turned to writing a series of three-syllable lines on related topics and tried to rearrange them into coherent poems. That approach didn't really work. In the end, I found the first poems I wrote to be the best of the bunch.

Tricube for the Year of the Horse

New year dawns
doors open
luck enters

kin gather
to honor
ancestors

lanterns rise
wishes fly
like horses

Tricube for the Lunar New Year

two moons past

the winter

solstice eve

the new year 

welcomes spring

and the horse

hooves thunder

hearts gallop

luck runs wild

Block Printing Tricube

printmaker

sees art in

black and white 

lines and curves

gouged and cut

inked and rolled

paper smoothed

breathe and lift

image blooms

Poems ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2026. All rights reserved.

You can read the poems my Poetry Sisters have written at the links below. 

• Tanita Davis
• Mary Lee Hahn
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon

Would you like to try the next challenge? We're writing poems in response to a poem (any poem, you choose!) written by the current U.S. Poet Laureate, Arthur Sze. You’ve got a month to craft your creation(s), then share your offering with the rest of us on February 27th in a post and/or on social media with the tag #PoetryPals. We look forward to reading your poems! 

I hope you'll take some time to check out all the wonderful poetic things being shared and collected today by Amy Ludwig VanDerwater at The Poem Farm. Happy poetry Friday! 

Poetry Friday is Here!

No matter which holiday you are celebrating this season, I wish you peace and light.

I am happy to host this last Poetry Friday of the year on a day when my poetry sisters and I have written to another challenge. This month, we were not locked into form, but theme, writing on the theme of peace, light, or hope.

I've been thinking of my mom lately, and all moms who deal with the chaos of the season. I wanted to write about finding peace in the midst of that chaos. I settled on the form of a sonnet. I had trouble choosing my favorite couplet to end it, so I'm sharing both.

Untitled Sonnet

When Christmas comes with drums and clanging cheer
the house becomes a stage for wild delight
the bells, the lists, the shouts of “Mom, come here!”
begin at dawn and echo through the night

The children shout, the playlist never ends
the oven groans beneath a sugared load
each hour invents three tasks it swiftly sends
to me alone, patrol of hearth and road

I crave sweet peace—a chair, a steaming cup
a door that stays untouched for sixty beats
I’d trade one present just to drink it up
in silence all alone and off my feet 

Yet when night falls and all the clamor ends
I laugh—this noise is love, my loudest friend

Poem ©Tricia Stohr-Hunt, 2025. All rights reserved.

Here is the second couplet I wrote to end the sonnet. Which do you like better? 

Yet when night falls and all the sounds depart
I miss the noise that fills my tired heart

You can read the poems my Poetry Sisters have written at the links below.

• Tanita Davis
• Mary Lee Hahn
• Sara Lewis Holmes
• Laura Purdie Salas
• Liz Garton Scanlon

We will be writing to 12 new challenges next year. We meet in early January to make our poetry plan. As soon as we have a January challenge, we'll share it with you so you can join in the fun.

I will be hitting the road before the sun comes up tomorrow to drive to western NY to visit family. That means I won't be around to visit your blogs and read your poems until late in the day or over the weekend. Rest assured that I will stop by!

Please join the Poetry Friday party by leaving your link below, and don't forget to leave a comment to let us know you're here. Happy poetry Friday, friends!  

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