October Poetry Club!

this month's colorful cento activity

What’s Next? October Poetry Club Prompt

Our October poetry club activity is to craft a Cento from some of your favorite Every Day Poems lines.

For some extra fun, you’re invited to hand-letter your Cento poem, using a different style or color for each unique line you’ve gathered from another poet. Or, you could put each line on a different slip of paper and collage your poem together.

Here’s our sample, using three options for presentation:

Option 1 • Type Out Your Poem, Like This

Barter

Opening like a flower
the work fragile
night after night
in shadow       patience
riveted to the secret
unable to speak—
it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough

Option 2 • Handwrite Your Poem with Varying Line Styles, Like This

Option 3 • Simple-Collage Your Handwritten Poem, Like this

Our “Barter” cento uses lines from Barter (Sara Teasdale), Bowl (Heather Swan), Nestament (Laurie Klein), Grey Gardens (Sarah Nichols), Sensei (Katrinka Moore), Boy and Egg (Naomi Shihab Nye), God of Rooms (Jean Valentine), We Were Missing a Present (Mahmoud Darwish)

How to Possibly Be Featured

Share your poem and/or photo of your poem with us by November 1, for possible feature in our next community post!