Even if you’re not in the US, or you’re not reading this in April, you can still devote an entire month to reading and writing poetry. You can teach others to write poetry, offering workshops in schools or libraries, or you can simply spend the month enjoying poetry on your own.

Maybe you already teach English or offer writing workshops. Maybe you consider yourself to be a nonfiction writer with a secret love of poetry. Or maybe you’ve never really taken a good look at the wide, wide world of poems.

Poems have many origins. If you already write poetry, you know you can find inspiration everywhere. Yet, too often, inspiration doesn’t come when called. These exercises and ideas can help you generate good first drafts that you can revise and play with for days or months.