What I Learned Writing 12 Poems in 12 Hours
- Veronica Tucker
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
This past weekend, I participated in the Poetry Half Marathon: twelve poems in twelve hours, each written to a new prompt released at the top of the hour. No editing, no second-guessing, no time to wait for inspiration to strike, just a pen, a clock, and whatever surfaced from the creative corners of my mind.
I signed up on a whim, intrigued by the challenge, but I didn’t expect how much it would teach me, not just about writing, but about myself.
1. Constraint invites invention: The prompts ranged wildly, from the surreal to the deeply personal. I was asked to imagine changing one thing about my past, include a hippopotamus, and write an abecedarian poem starting from the letter Z. There was no time to be picky. Each prompt forced me to commit, to trust that my voice would find a way through, even if the first few lines felt awkward or incomplete.
2. Not every poem needs to be good to be valuable: Some hours, I loved what came out. Others, I barely made the finish line. But each attempt taught me something: how I tend to start with image, how I lean into metaphor when I am unsure, how themes of motherhood and medicine sneak in even when I try to resist. It wasn’t about perfection. It was about showing up.
3. Prompts are portals: One of my favorite moments came from the instruction to open a window and see another universe. It gave me permission to leave the room I was physically in, to dream bigger, weirder, freer. Another asked me to begin and end with the image of fire, and the poem that emerged surprised me with its quiet tenderness.
4. My voice is more consistent than I thought: Even as the prompts shifted, one moment asking for myth, the next for dumplings and trousers, my tone stayed recognizable. I realized I have a poetic fingerprint: lyric, slightly surreal, emotionally anchored. The marathon didn’t dilute that. It amplified it.
5. Writing can be both exhausting and exhilarating: By the twelfth hour, I was tired. My metaphors were thinning. But when I read back through the full set, I felt something close to pride. Not because they were perfect, but because they were mine. Written in real time, without armor.
Here are the 12 prompts I responded to, in order:
Imagine changing one thing about your past. Write a poem about how your life would be if that one thing had changed.
Write a poem containing a hippopotamus.
The title of the poem is Mythmaking. The contents are up to you.
The title of your poem is The Art Thief. Everything else is up to you.
Write a poem about opening a window and seeing another universe through it.
Choose one of the following songs and listen to it completely before writing a poem. (I chose Mitski's Washing Machine Heart.)
Write a poem that begins and ends with an image of fire, or begins and ends with the word fire.
Write a poem that contains at least five of the following ten words: mug, sliver, branches, eve, dumplings, trousers, clatter, bookshelf, loud, vinyl.
Write a poem about being lost.
Write an abecedarian.
Write a poem from the perspective of someone at a different stage in life than you currently are.
Write a poem about something you don’t understand.
Some of these may turn into fuller pieces later. Some might never be touched again. But all of them reminded me why I write. Not to impress or even to produce, but to connect. To stay present. To find myself on the page, hour after hour, poem after poem.
And I would do it again.
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