Tanka

Sep­tem­ber 28, 2026 No Com­ments

Write a five-line poem about a small moment that car­ries a big feel­ing.

Your lines should fol­low this syl­la­ble pat­tern:

5 syl­la­bles
7 syl­la­bles
5 syl­la­bles
7 syl­la­bles
7 syl­la­bles

Choose a moment you can pic­ture clear­ly: stand­ing at a win­dow dur­ing a storm, hear­ing some­one call your name, find­ing some­thing you thought you had lost, walk­ing into a new class­room, or sit­ting beside some­one who needs you.

Begin with what you can see, hear, touch, smell, or taste. Then let the poem turn inward. By the final two lines, reveal why this ordi­nary moment mat­ters to you.

Chal­lenge: Don’t name the feel­ing direct­ly. Instead of say­ing I was lone­ly or I felt hope­ful, let the details of the moment show us.

Golden Shovel

Sep­tem­ber 28, 2026 No Com­ments

Choose one line from a poem that means some­thing to you. Write the words of that line down the right-hand side of your page, one word at a time.

Now write a new poem in which each line ends with one of those words, in the same order.

Let your poem tell a sto­ry of its own. You might write about a time you dis­cov­ered some­thing about your­self, some­one who helped you find your courage, a place that feels like home, or a moment when you real­ized your voice mat­tered.

When you’re fin­ished, read the last word of every line from top to bot­tom. The orig­i­nal line should appear there, hid­den inside your new poem.

Chal­lenge: Try to make the bor­rowed words feel com­plete­ly natural—as though they were always meant to belong to your poem.

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