The deadline was reached an no poems received. If you stumble across this thread and want to try the challenge, then feel free to give it a go and post your poem here.

***

All you need is fifteen minutes to enter this challenge. In fact, you must not spend more time than that!

The aim is not to write the best poem in the world, the aim is to write something, to engage, to take part. Novices and prose writes are encouraged to play.

There are only 2 rules:

1) Spend no more than 15 minutes. DO NOT CHEAT! Some people will cheat, don't be one of them!!

2) It must start with the words: "And when".

Submissions to me by midnight GMT Sunday 4th March. 23 September 2018 30 September 2019.

No need to read further if you are short of time, or if you just want to get on with it.

Tips:

If you normally write prose try not to get over poetic. Focus on the concrete. Try telling a story, but you will have to leave much to the reader's imagination.

Line breaks do not a poem make. If you prefer to write without breaks, that is perfectly fine.

If you are a poetry writer, save some time out of the 15 to play with sounds and meter.

One way to approach this is to write the first 2 words "And when" then write whatever comes into your head. Spend 5 mins doing that, then the next 5 re-hashing what you just wrote to create something coherent. Spend the last 5 mins checking your grammar and looking for more interesting words to use. DO NOT CHEAT!

If you are wondering why I use the prompt "And when" not just "When" it's because I wanted to start with an iamb (da DUM). If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's fine, it won't make not a jot of difference.

I'd never done this myself, so thought I better had before setting it as a challenge. Here's my attempt.

And when the pear tree fell
in the storms of twenty-twelve,
I found a wooded casket, hidden
amongst the earthy roots.
I brushed it clean and dried it out
and placed it on my windowsill.
One day I'll look inside; perhaps.

sounds good, I'll be in .....

Quote from: Vienna on February 23, 2018, 10:06:46 AM
sounds good, I'll be in .....

Good man!

One day to go and I've been unswamped with no entries.

No entries received. Oh well never mind.  :)

If anyone wants to give it a go in the future, just post your poem on this thread.

M

I didnt want to "win" it by simply being the one and only entry, and it certainly looked like there wasn't going to be any, I thought I'll leave it. Sorry mate.

No worries.  :)

Hey Mark,

Dumb blonde feigning ignorance here. Okay, so the ignorance is real.   ::)

Are you going to give this another go? If so, I'm in.

OK. Done. Send me your entry before the closing date.

M

Okay, I'm going for it. Have to set the timer on my phone.

Okay, I'm in. I didn't cheat and that will be evident. A challenge indeed.

Come on folks, let's play!

are the challenges on again?? I'll be in.

Yep.

Extended by a week because I know so many people are on the verge of submitting their entries.

Hey Mark, time to kick some fanny butt on this. There should be enough people here to get this going again. We need challenges.