Submission Guidelines

“The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist.”

- Walt Whitman, introduction to Blades of Grass

Dead Poets Live is a collaborative effort to re-introduce ourselves to the work of great poets and to create poetry inspired by their writings.

If you’d like to be added as a Dead Poets Live writer, leave a reply to this post, and we’ll add you.

To submit a prompt:

1. Write a poem inspired by a work you love, using a theme from the source.
2. It’s your prompt, so feel free to use a specific form or leave it open to the responder’s choice (freestyle). If you have a specific form in mind, make sure to link to an explanation of the form.
3. Share the link to the source poem if available online. If it is offline share the source text in quotes and link the original publication in Amazon or Goodreads.
4. Add tags Dead Poets Live and the form (haiku, sonnet, ABAB, one-line, freestyle, etc) and whatever other tags you choose.
5. At the top right of your profile, click “add to publication” and choose Dead Poets Society.

See the example below:

Image by Thomas-Suisse from Pixabay

Explode

You and me,

we light a fuse,

burn

ever closer

to explosion or

liberation?

Theme prompt: Explode

Form: Freestyle

Inspired by Langston Hughes, Harlem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46548/harlem

To participate:

1. Write a poem in response to the prompt.
2. Share the link to your poem in the comments below the prompt poem and/or submit to Dead Poets Society for publication.
3. Include a link the original poem and tag the author in your work.

Notes:

• Cite portions of original work in quotes and share links to the full poem on sites like poetryfoundation.org or link to book publications on Amazon. Let’s not violate copyright laws!
• Images are great Pixabay.com or Unsplash are great sources — wikipedia has useable Creative Commons images for older poets.
• Submissions containing hate-speech, spam, explicit erotic content, pointed politics (ideas are fine, but attacks on individuals are not) or other themes that could jeopardize my professional work will not be published.