In a recent installment of our Craft Capsules series, Megan Fernandes describes a writing exercise centered around breath that she assigns to her students. “I tell my students to take out their phones and record themselves saying ‘I love you’ over and over again in a single breath, noting the time,” she writes. By counting the number of times this phrase is said in one breath, the students can calculate how long their lines are and how many stanzas their poems will contain. This week try Fernandes’s writing exercise to find the natural line length of your own breath and write a poem guided by the capacity of your lungs.

If you are a poet looking to place a manuscript of experimental or hybrid work, including work in translation, consider submitting to Mason Jar Press’s 1729 Book Prize. Given annually in alternating years for a book of poetry or a book of prose, this year’s contest offers a prize of $1,000 and publication by Mason Jar Press for a poetry collection that is at once “challenging” and “engaging.” Chen Chen will judge.

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Using only the online submission system, submit a poetry manuscript of 50 to 75 poems or pages by July 31 (submissions will be capped at 500 entrants). There is no entry fee. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

This year, Mason Jar Press has released titles including the debut poetry collections Glazed With War by Pantea Amin Tofangchi and trans [re]incarnation by Elias Kerr, as well as its literary journal’s most recent issue, Jarnal Volume 3: Transitions (edited by Tara Campbell). Founded by Micheal B. Tager and Ian Anderson—classmates from the University of Baltimore MFA program—the independent press has published handmade, limited-run chapbooks and full-length books since 2014. The 2nd annual 1729 Book Prize, offered in partnership with The Ivy Bookshop, will run in line with the press’s mission of publishing work that “is meant to challenge status quos, both literary and culturally,” while also having “merit in both those realms.”

“Oftentimes, when I would perform at poetry readings, I’d tell these little stories about what inspired a poem (such as growing up in a restaurant and being locked in the meat freezer),” says Jane Wong in an interview for PEN America’s PEN Ten series about her debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City (Tin House, 2023). “I started to realize that these little poem ‘intros’ were insights into much larger stories—stories that go beyond my own family, my own relationships.” This week, inspired by Wong’s generative writing practice, return to an old draft of a poem, story, or essay, and begin a new essay that looks deeper into the backstory of that work. What did you leave unsaid?

Storytelling is an art form, but there appears to be some science involved as well. In an episode for NPR’s Morning Edition news radio program, social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam reports on what Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert found when researching whether people preferred hearing stories about shared experiences or novel experiences. What Gilbert and his colleagues discovered was that people much preferred stories about familiar experiences, so much so that at your next dinner party, he recommends spending “less time talking about experiences that only you've had and more time talking about experiences that your listeners have also had.” Inspired by this behavioral research, write a story set during a dinner party in which conflicts arise from the stories shared by guests. Will an easily bothered guest become embittered by the swell of unamusing stories?

This week marks the birthday of the iconic Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who would have turned 119 on July 12. Known for his historical epics, political manifestos, and love poems, Neruda’s incisive and joyful odes were often dedicated to ordinary objects making them approachable yet surreal. In “Ode to My Socks,” translated from the Spanish by Robert Bly, Neruda describes his covered feet as “two fish made / of wool, / two long sharks / sea-blue.” In “Ode to a Large Tuna in the Market,” translated from the Spanish by Robert Robinson, Neruda describes a dead tuna fish as “a dark bullet / barreled / from the depths.” Inspired by Neruda’s electric, surreal images, write an ode to an ordinary object in your life. Whether it be a bookshelf, a desk, or a coat, think expansively about how to honor and describe this praiseworthy item.

“I want to make a praise of sleep. Not as a practitioner…but as a reader,” writes Anne Carson in her essay “Every Exit Is an Entrance (A Praise of Sleep),” which appears in her book Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera (Knopf, 2005). With careful research and introspection, Carson writes about all the ways writers discuss sleep in their work, uncovering her own fraught relationship to it along the way. The essay combines the forms of literary criticism and personal essay—offering close readings of the works of Virginia Woolf, John Keats, Elizabeth Bishop, and others, while burrowing deeper into emotions. Inspired by Carson’s mixing of forms, choose a topic that eludes you—perhaps dreams, fashion, or love—and write a personal essay that uses research to gain a deeper understanding of it. What will you praise?

Summer vacations and travel often provide adventure, conflict, and reflection whether in real life or in a fictional story. In Valeria Luiselli’s novel Lost Children Archive (Knopf, 2019), a family sets off on a road trip from New York to Arizona in the heat of the summer and tensions rise as they collide with news of an immigration crisis on the southwestern border of the country. In Alejandro Varela’s short story “The Caretakers,” the protagonist rides the subway in New York City on a balmy day after visiting his aunt in the hospital and reflects on family, friendships, and race. Write a short story with a pivotal scene set in a moving vehicle on a hot day. How will your story use travel as a theme?

Independence Day, colloquially known as the Fourth of July in the United States, is the annual celebration of nationhood commemorating the passage of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. For centuries, poets have offered deeply personal perspectives on what it means to celebrate their country, including Alicia Ostriker in her poem “The History of America,” in which she writes: “Murdering the buffalo, driving the laggard regiments, / The caring was a necessary myth…” and Naomi Shihab Nye in her poem “No Explosions,” in which she writes: “To enjoy / fireworks / you would have / to have lived / a different kind / of life.” This week write a poem reflecting on your relationship to nationhood. What contradictory feelings surface when you consider your citizenship? For further inspiration, check out the Poetry Foundation’s selection of poems for the Fourth of July.

Are you looking for a home for your debut poetry collection? Try submitting to the Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize from Conduit Books & Ephemera, which offers a prize of $1,500, publication, and 30 author copies of the book for the winning author.

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Submit a manuscript of 48 to 90 pages with a $25 entry fee by July 7. Bob Hicok will judge. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Conduit Books & Ephemera was founded in 2018 in celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Conduit, a biannual literary journal of poetry and prose. Hicok sponsored the inaugural Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize, named after his grandmother-in-law, “a great supporter of young poets.” The annual prize goes to a poet writing in English who has yet to publish a full-length poetry collection. Those who submit are advised to familiarize themselves with Conduit, a magazine “which champions originality, intelligence, irreverence, and humanity.” The press also offers the Minds on Fire Open Book Prize, open to any poet writing in English and judged by Conduit’s editorial board. Submissions for the Minds on Fire prize open August 1.