Gavin Bennett's Blog: 2015 November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 12

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “After (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. Possible titles might include: “After the Music Stops,” “After Hours,” or “After I Finish Writing a Poem, I Write Another One.”

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Re-create Your Poetry!

Revision doesn’t have to be a chore–something that should be done after the excitement of composing the first draft. Rather, it’s an extension of the creation process!

In the 48-minute tutorial video Re-creating Poetry: How to Revise Poems, poets will be inspired with several ways to re-create their poems with the help of seven revision filters that they can turn to again and again.

Click to continue.

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Here’s my attempt at an After Blank poem:

“After You Take It to the Police”

Prepare to be heckled about how nobody lives in the Carter House
and how they’ve already checked it out and how kids shouldn’t be
getting involved in “serious” business, like a presumed homicide,
involving a known drug dealer. Expect to be shown the door, and then,

walk through it. Your parents will be called, and they’ll sit you down
and talk to you about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate
while reminding you that adults are “busy” taking care of the “serious”
issues of the world. Just be a kid, they’ll say and pat you on the head

like you’re a puppy dog. You only get one chance to be a kid, they’ll
remind you over and over with a hint of nostalgia. Don’t even attempt
to argue with the adults; they’ll never understand, or more accurately,
they’ll never listen to a group of teenagers with active imaginations,

because that’s what this really all boils down to, isn’t it? Kids don’t know–
can’t even begin to fathom–what adults have to sift through every day.

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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer’s Digest Writing Community and author of the poetry collection, Solving the World’s Problems (Press 53). He edits Poet’s Market and Writer’s Market, in addition to writing a free weekly WritersMarket.com newsletter and a poetry column for Writer’s Digest magazine.

This is his eighth year of hosting and participating in the November PAD (Poem-A-Day) Chapbook Challenge. He can’t wait to see what everyone creates this month–not only on a day-by-day basis, but when the chapbooks start arriving in December and January. Fun, fun, fun.

Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.

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