photo by Ednl
We are challenging you to write your own mini anthology of poems this August! To help you, every two days poet Jon Stone will set a new challenge on the Young Poets Network site to spark off a new poem.
Challenge 16. Pick a Title for your Anthology
If you’ve been following the challenges throughout August you should have a healthy clutch of poems. Now is the day to do some last minute re-drafting, choose and order for them and give them a title and send them to us!
It you’ve been submitting poems daily and have already sent all your work to us, use today to pick one poem that you’re least happy with and write a new version to submit. If you need help redrafting there are tips on the YPN site.
Submitting your poem
Jon has now selected his favourite responses to the August challenges, but it’s still a great project to create your own anthology and give it a title. Once you’ve done that, why not pick your favourite poems and submit them to one of the opportunities on our Poetry Opportunities Page? Have a read of these poems for inspiration; they were chosen to represent Jon’s favourite anthologies:
Modern Classics by Josh Keeling
Beehive by Upasna Saha
Darkness by Angelique Cridland
Jon Stone was born in Derby and currently lives in Whitechapel, London. He is co-creator of the multi-format arts journal Fuselit and micro-anthology publishers Sidekick Books. He won a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award in 2012 and his collection, School of Forgery (Salt, 2012) is a Poetry Book Society Summer Recommendation. He works as a court transcript editor.
Published August, 2012
Thank you so much for this challenge! It was honestly so much fun. Hope to see something like this again on the site!
Hi U.S – really glad you liked the challenge! I’m looking forward to reading the submissions.
So if we are sending in multiple poems, in the subject bar do we put them as(example):
Challenge 1,2,3
or differently?
Hi Heather,
For future reference – numbering the challenges in the subject bar as you suggest is perfect. And of course include your name as well!
Seconded.
It’s fun experimenting with different forms and prompts!
Great challenge but I was on holidays and have just come back so I may not be aable to submit a lot of poems
Naise
Hi Naise,
You can always use these exercises as workshops to get you writing – maybe you could write a poem taking something from your holiday as a theme, and use on of Jon’s challenges to give it shape?
Well, I got to admit that I didn’t have enough time to do all of the challenges, but they were so much fun. They also gave me the chance to explore new grounds and experiment. So, thanks for creating these challenges.
That’s great, Christie! We’ll be posting a new challenge soon so get your pen (or keyboard!) ready…
Out of curiosity, how many poets participated in this set of challenges?
About 80 people! This was obviously a popular set.