One Line Poem Project
Submission policies: Responses
Welcome to Chalkboard’s on-going One Line Poem project. This project revolves around the idea that compressed poetry can have as much or more of an impact as a multi-verse poem. Weekly, we publish a prompt-piece developed by a Chalkboard community member. Participants respond to the prompt-piece with their own poem of 30 words or less.
Note: What follows are the policies for publishing your response on Chalkboard. If you write a poem that doesn’t meet our parameters (which would be fine), we encourage you to self-publish or offer it to another publication.
What is a one liner?
One line poems are, by definition, short. For this project, they are no longer than 30 words. Specifically, poems submitted to Chalkboard for this project must be:
One verse, one sentence, one thought. Stringing multiple lines or phrases together is allowed as long as the poetic response is 30 words or less.
The word limit applies to the poem itself. If you have a story or explanation that goes with the piece, feel free to add it. We ask that you insert a divider between the piece and the explanation.
Who can submit?
Poems can be submitted by any Chalkboard writer. If you wish to be added as a Chalkboard writer, please go to either our Participate tab OR our Smedian page and click the request to contribute button.
When are new prompts published?
New prompts are published every Wednesday (usually by 2 pm California time.)
You can sign up for our mailing list by completing this form.
Once a prompt has been published, you may respond to it at any time. The last 24 prompts are shown at the bottom of the One Line Poem tab of Chalkboard.
UPDATED: Can I submit locked pieces?
This project accepts locked pieces only when they are responses to prompts. We are making this change at the request of a large percentage of the community. If you are unable to see a locked piece, leave the author a note asking for the friend link. We do not accept locked prompts!
Please note: We prefer unlocked pieces, as a good part of our community are not members. Please be willing to share friend links if you lock your one liner.
What tags should I use?
We use two tags for placement of your piece on our page: “Chalkboard Espresso” or “One Line”.
- Use the “Chalkboard Espresso” tag if the length of your poem is 15 words or less
- Use the “One Line” tag if the length of your poem is 16 to 30 words
On your responses, please do not use the tag “One Line Poetry Prompt”, which is reserved for the poet providing the prompt. If you do, your poem will show in the wrong place on our site. The editors will do our best to remove this prompt where applicable, but we do not guarantee we will catch all uses of it.
The other 4 tags Medium allows on a piece are yours to choose. We recommend giving your piece the tag “poetry” for maximum exposure.
Do I need a featured image?
Poems submitted for publication in this project must have at least one image. The size of the main image must be at least 900 pixels on at least one side. Poems with images smaller than that will not be accepted.
In addition, images must have attribution in the caption of your image. Acceptable captions include:
- Image by the author (or from the personal collection of the author)
- A standard attribution caption from Unsplash
- A link to the location of the original image
- A link to the Flickr version of the image AND a link to the photographer’s profile on Flickr
What else do I need to know?
While we do not require a link to the prompt piece for the week, we do ask that you include at least an “Inspired by” note that mentions the prompt and the prompter for the week.
Submissions should be in draft mode. Poems that have already beem published may be submitted to Chalkboard, but please realize they may not show on the One Line Poem tab in the right order.
If issues with your submission need to be addressed before the piece is ready for publication, it will be returned. The editors will help if they have time and are able. Otherwise, you will need to find and fix the problems with the piece and resubmit it. Often issues relate to the image and attribution, and we need absolute adherence to our policies in this area. Repeated violations may get your editor upset, which should be avoided. 😃
Again, please word count your pieces before submitting them.
