The 2026 Progressive Poem is Here!

Map Created initially by Tabatha Yeatts and modified throughout the month
The Land of Poetry

On my first trip to the Land of Poetry,
I saw anthologies of every color, tall as buildings.
A world of words, wonder on wings, waiting just for me!
Birding for words shimmering, flecked in golden gilding.

Binoculars ready, I toured boulevards and side streets,
exploring vibrant verses, verses so honest and tender.
feathery lyrics, bright flitting avian athletes
soaring ‘cross pages in rhythmic splendor.

In the Land of Poetry, I am the conductor,
seeking oodles of poems that tug at my heart,
a musical medley of sound and structure,
An open mic in Frost Forest! Wonder who’ll take part?

There’s a pause in the program; no one takes the stage
the trees quiver, the audience looks up. Raven lands,
singing Earth’s message of the sage.
“Poetry in motion will be forevermore, from forests to sands.”

“Scatter,” she croaked. “Beyond Wilde Pond, to each and every beach.”
Meek Dove mustered courage and sang, “Instill humanity with compassion and peace.
Let Thackeray’s middle name, from this thicket, hearts reach!”
Her gentle coo-ooo-ooos reverberate, soft as fleece.

Words dart, dimple—Do I dare warble what's in my soul?
I’ve inhaled inspiration…yes, I’ll risk my refrain.
I fly to the mic, chanting "Tadpole, mole and oriole!
Come all living beings from water, land, air; come high and low terrains!

Welcome to the National Poetry Month Kitlitosphere Progressive Poem.

What is the Progressive Poem? 

It began with Irene Latham, who hosted it from 2012-2019. Those archives of the poem can be found HERE! Margaret Simon took over in 2020, and those archives are HERE!

Here are the rules:

  • The poem passes from blog to blog.
  • Each poet/blogger adds a line.
  • The poem is for children.
  • Each blogger copies the previous line exactly as written, unless permission from that poet has been given. They then add their own line, offering an introduction if they wish.

I’m handing off the poem to Tanita, who will begin the final 3-line stanza. Heidi handed the poem to me, accompanied by the beautiful sentiment, “Our Earth is the Poem of All Poems.” Tanita, you can add quotation marks to my line if you think the poem’s speaker has said enough!

Have fun!

Here’s who wrote each of the lines:

April 1 Tabatha Yeatts at The Opposite of Indifference
April 2 Cathy Stenquist at A Little Bit of This and That
April 3 Patricia Franz at Reverie
April 4 Donna Smith at Mainely Write
April 5 Janice Scully at Salt City Verse
April 6 Denise Krebs at Dare to Care
April 7 Ruth Hersey at There is no such thing as a God-forsaken town
April 8 Rose Cappelli at Imagine the Possibilities
April 9 Margaret Simon at Reflections on the Teche
April 10 Janet Clare Fagel at Reflections on the Teche
April 11 Diane Davis at Starting Again in Poetry
April 12 Linda Baie at Teacher Dance
April 13 Linda Mitchell at Another Word Edgewise
April 14 Jone MacCulloch at Jone Rush MacCulloch
April 15 Joyce Uglow at Storied Ink
April 16 Carol Varsalona at Beyond Literacy Link
April 17 Robyn Hood Black at Life on the Deckle Edge
April 18 Michele Kogan at More Art for All
April 19 Kim Johnson at Common Threads
April 20 Buffy Silverman
April 21 Irene Latham at Live Your Poem
April 22 Karen Edmisten
April 23 Heidi Mordhorst at my juicy little universe
April 24 Mary Lee Hahn at A(nother) Year of Reading
April 25 Tanita Davis at Fiction, instead of Lies
April 26 Sharon Roy at Pedaling Poet​
April 27 Tracey Kiff-Judson at Tangles and Tails

Poetry Friday: This Week In the News and an Ekphrastic Challenge

This final Friday of National Poetry Month is also a Poetry Sisters challenge week! We’re writing ekphrastic poems, so I chose an image from today’s NYT morning newsletter. Such a different spring view from my window and from his. When will this madness end?

Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with this month:

Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect 

Here are the rest of my poems from this week:

April 17  As If We Needed One More Example of What Narcissism Looks Like
April 18  Making Good
April 19  Primatology
April 20  Shooting Spree
April 21  A River Runs Through It
April 22  Today’s News is Outside Your Front Door

Irene has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Live Your Poem.

Poetry Friday: Another Week in the News

Today (Thursday, April 16) I needed a break from the unrelenting frazzlement of the U.S. news cycle, so I popped over to Al Jazeera for headlines from Europe. It was quite refreshing.

Here are the rest of my poems from this week:

April 10  News Fatigue

April 11  National Poetry Month

April 12  You Are a Crew

April 13  Orban Concedes Defeat

April 14  President vs. Pope

April 15  War in the Middle East

I didn’t bother linking into the roundup last week because I knew I wouldn’t be able to comment. Here’s last week’s post/poems.

Heidi has something special planned for this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at my juicy little universe.

Poetry Friday: This Week in the News

April 4  Perspective

April 5  Nostalgia

April 6  Paying Attention, Then Looking Away

April 7  Bright Spot

April 8  Breaking News from Paleontology

April 9  July 5, 1978

I’m traveling and won’t be able to comment this week. Happy Poetry Friday! Happy NPM!

Jone has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Jone Rush MacCulloch.

Poetry Friday and Poetry Every Day

Happy National Poetry Month! My daily poems are at Poetrepository here and on Substack here and in IG stories here if you want to follow along. Or just check in here on Fridays for my weekly roundup!

March 31  “That’s a Bridge Too Far”
April 1  Supreme Court Birthright Citizenship Case
April 2  Making a Difference in a Distracted and Divided World
April 3  Finally, Some Good News

Today is also Inklings Challenge Day. Linda challenged us to write an ars poetica poem, “A poem that explains the ‘art of poetry,’ or a meditation on poetry using the form and techniques of a poem.” I think mine fits best in the second category.

A few phrases in my poem were borrowed from Pádrig Ó Tuama’s 3/29 Poetry Unbound Substack “Belief and Wonder.”

Here’s how the rest of the Inklings met this month’s challenge:

Catherine @Reading to the Core
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda @A Word Edgewise

Matt has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme.

Poetry Friday: Celebrating Twilight

This is a double-duty poem. First, it celebrates the Book Birthday of Marcie Flinchum Atkins’ new release, WHEN TWILIGHT COMES. Congratulations, Marcie!

Second, it’s a Poetry Sister challenge poem. This month we tried our hands at Ovillejos. According to Writer’s Digest, “The ovillejo is an old Spanish form popularized by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). This 10-line poem is comprised of 3 rhyming couplets (or 2-line stanzas) and a quatrain (or 4-line stanza).” Easy, right? Oh…there’s more: “The first line of each couplet is 8 syllables long and presents a question to which the second line responds in 3 to 4 syllables–either as an answer or an echo.” (I think we mostly ignored that part…but there’s still more!) “The quatrain is also referred to as a redondilla (which is usually a quatrain written in trochaic tetrameter) with an abba rhyme pattern. The final line of the quatrain also combines lines 2, 4, and 6 together.” WHEW!

I pretty quickly discovered that in order to have a final line that made sense, I would need to start there and reverse engineer the whole poem. It felt like part puzzle, part fill-in-the-blanks. But I’m not sad about how mine turned out in the end!

Marcie has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Marcie Flinchum Atkins, and I can’t wait to see all the ways the community is lighting up the twilight skies in honor of her new book!

Here’s what the rest of the Poetry Sisters came up with this month:

Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect 

Poetry Friday: The News in Poetry

.

I’ve found my way back into a regular poetry writing routine and simultaneously I might have found my NPM project. As I read the NYT or other assorted news sources, I borrow bits and pieces and write a tricube.

I’ve also been playing with haiku-comics.

There’s room during NPM for both, right?

Tanita has this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup at {fiction, instead of lies}

Poetry Friday: Yesterday

I’m in a bit of a writing slump, so thank goodness for Audrey Gidman’s Poetry Prompt Calendars! Here is the prompt for 3/11, which was the ninth anniversary of our mom’s death. Today, 3/12, is the 32-year anniversary of our dad’s death.

Write two short, separate, unrelated poems, 4-5 lines each. One describing a body of water you’re standing beside. One about a relative—a parent, a sibling, a child, or another relative (alternately, a person very dear to you—a lover, chosen family etc.) Once complete, stack the poems so the first line of one of the poems is first on the page, then the first line of the second poem is next. Weave them together in this way until you have one poem that contains two poems. You may consider weaving the poems again, so the second begins first. Notice what happens. Adjust as needed. It’s okay if the poem isn’t a success, it’s not about that, but you might be surprised by what “success” looks like.

Here are my two short, separate, unrelated poems:

Here is how the wove together, with a few necessary adjustments:

Linda has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at TeacherDance.

Poetry Friday: Becoming

Ever since Sara Teasdale’s poem “There Will Come Soft Rains” was the Poem of the Day this past week on Poets.org, I’ve been going back to it over and over again, working to memorize it. Sara T. and I go way back. My fourth graders and I memorized “Barter” my first year of teaching. I wish I had memorized a poem a year with every class. Just think of the library of words and images I’d have at my beck and call.

The turn in the middle of “There Will Come Soft Rains” comes as a gut punch. Especially now. I know that Nature wouldn’t miss humankind, but I desperately want her to know that I am mourning all that humans have destroyed, all that the current administration is determined to destroy. I want to bear witness to her ordinary miracles (cue Sarah McLachlan) and celebrate the life force that makes and heals our planet.

Margaret gave the Inklings this month’s challenge to write a poem using the word “becoming” somewhere in it. You might be able to feel the influence of Sara T. in my writing.

Here’s how the rest of the Inklings met this month’s challenge:

Catherine @Reading to the Core
Heidi @my juicy little universe
Margaret @Reflections on the Teche
Molly @Nix the Comfort Zone
Linda @A Word Edgewise

Karen has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Karen Edmisten*.

Poetry Friday: After Arthur Sze

Without actually meaning to, the Poetry Sisters have done great service to the Poetry Friday community by shining a spotlight on our current Poet Laureate, Arthur Sze. Were you, like us, not very (or at all) familiar with Sze’s poetry? We were delighted to dive in and discover his distinctive style of close focus on minute details in combination with big expansive ideas. We hope, if you joined us in the challenge, you were similarly delighted. And if you are just along for the ride and reading all the various takes on this challenge, again, we hope you are treated to a sense of delight.

I chose Sze’s poem “The Chance” because I loved the way the speaker ponders while they drive (as I am also wont to do). I loved the double meanings — “And as I approach thirty” can be miles per hour, or an age. As I approach my next birthday that ends in a zero, I absolutely agree that “the distances / are shorter than I guess.” I whole-heartedly agree with “I want a passion that grows and grows.” And those last two lines — swoon!

Rather than using those last two lines as the striking line for an acrostic (aligned vertically on the left), or a Golden Shovel (aligned vertically on the right), I used a new form (still under construction) that Heidi Mordhorst is calling the Fault Line Form, with my striking line through the middle of my poem.

On the topic of new forms, in March, the Poetry Sisters will be attempting to unravel the Ovillejo!

I look forward to reading what the rest of the Poetry Sisters, and all who are joining us in conversation with Arthur Sze, have written!

Laura @ Laura Purdie Salas
Liz @ Liz Garton Scanlon
Sara @ Read Write Believe
Tanita @ {fiction, instead of lies}
Tricia @ The Miss Rumphius Effect 

Margaret has this week’s Poetry Friday roundup at Reflections on the Teche.