October Poetry Challenge: 30 Poems in 30 Days

Hollie Hardy is running an online poetry challenge this October, and it's a full-month commitment: 30 poems in 30 days. It runs from Thursday, October 1 through Friday, October 30, hosted in a Wet.Ink virtual classroom. The whole thing is asynchronous, so you work on your own time, but the goal is to put a poem on the page every single day.

Hardy, an Austin poet and educator, provides a new writing prompt each day—except for Halloween—and the prompts aren't just random. They follow a larger arc across the month. You'll start with thematic prompts like Self-Portrait, Supermarket, and The Movies, then move into experimental forms like the rebel sonnet, zuihitsu, contrapuntal, and duplex. From there, it shifts to process-based approaches: oulipo, ekphrasis, erasure, and collage. Each prompt comes with curated example poems and brief craft notes to get you moving. You post your best effort by midnight, and there's no feedback or judgment—the point is quantity first, quality later. By the end, you'll have thirty rough drafts to revise, plus some new confidence and a few new friends.

Hardy is well-known in the local scene. She's the author of How to Take a Bullet, And Other Survival Poems, and her collection Lions Like Us came out through Red Light Lit Press in 2024, with a second full-length collection on the way. She also edits manuscripts and hosts the Saturday Night Special reading series, and has cofounded and hosted literary events like Flight of Poets, Beast Crawl Literary Festival, Velvet Revolution, and Pairings for the Senses.

Beyond the daily prompts, there are two bonus live Zoom sessions: an optional kickoff meet-and-greet on the first evening and a closing celebration at the end of the month. The challenge costs $125.00.