Plant Your Poetry Prompt Calendar - May

A month of prompts on the theme of BLOSSOM, and a writing session to steer you into a flourishing writing life.

It is the hour to rend thy chains, the blossom time of souls - Katharine Lee Bates

What another inspiring month of writing a poem a day for April on the theme of Growth. If you haven’t already, I would go and check out yesterday’s post which features gorgeous poems from the members of this community written over that time.

The theme for May is Blossom, which is all about honoring and embracing our luminous and weird selves, as well as opening up to the gifts this month wants to bestow on us. Think of it as our ‘hot girl’ month, where we are magnetic and energetic, ideas, dreams and people flock to us. How can we embody that energy in our poems and in our daily lives? Perhaps it isn’t as obvious as that, perhaps our blossoming is subtle and nuanced and we feel a gentle relief as the sun and our souls begin to strengthen and flower. Maybe this isn’t about us, but about the incredible acts of nature we see blossoming around us on our walks as we approach Summer.

For those that are new here, Plant Your Poetry on Substack is a follow on from my bestselling book Plant Your Poetry: 365 Poems and Prompts to Grow Your Writing Habit, which aims to support and gently guide readers and writers towards a flourishing writing life.

If this is your first time writing with me or Plant Your Poetry, here are a few helpful tips on how to begin and how to keep going:

• Download and print out the monthly prompts available below. Stick them up somewhere you will see them often

• Look at the daily prompt earlyish and carry it around with you

• Set a timer for 10 minutes and write whatever wants to be written on that prompt, little to no editing as you go will give it an easier flow

• Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day, love yourself back on track

• If you aren’t inspired by a particular prompt, use a different prompt that jumps out to you instead - there is no right or wrong way to do this

• Keep a special journal or dedicate a folder or notebook specifically for these prompts and poems to keep everything in one place

• Share your words where you can - you will be seen, encouraged and supported

• Nothing matters except the goal of writing for 10 minutes on the prompt today.

• If you are struggling, seek support and tell about it

• Write with a buddy, share the prompts between you, write on alternative days and send them to each other, or meet up to write where you can, accountability is your best friend

• Know that you deserve this and you are someone who can do this sort of thing.

A reminder for everyone: there is a subscriber only chat available where you can share your words daily as you write them, I will be posting a new thread today and at the beginning of each month and you can reply to the thread with your poems, that way they will be easy to find and others working their way through the prompts can offer their support and encouragement towards your beautiful lines of poetry. I will be reading every piece that is written and will highlight poems that resonate on the 1st of the next month.

Underneath the writing session below are downloadable and printable pages of the Plant Your Poetry Prompt Calendar so you may stick the prompts up somewhere in your sacred or creative space to write, meditate, or ponder on. It may feel satisfying to tick off the prompts as you go.

I’m so excited to go on this journey with you - let’s dive in!